Fucking Men

Photo by Bob Seary

New Theatre presents FUCKING MEN, by Joe Dipietro, at the New Theatre, King St. Newtown. 6 February - 10 March.

FUCKING MEN, written in 2009, by American Joe Dipietro, an award winning Musical Theatre collaborator (I LOVE YOU YOU'RE PERFECT, NOW CHANGE; MEMPHIS), uses the shape of Arthur Schnizler's 1897 play, REIGEN, more popularly known under the French title, LA RONDE. The shape is that of 10 interconnecting scenes between pairs of lovers across a strata of social standings.

Schnitzler, a Doctor (like Chekhov), living in Vienna, was also a playwright/novelist/short story writer. His repertoire is oddly neglected in Australia. The plays deal, mostly, with the middle class and are forensic observations of the basic humanities of his characters with perceptive explorations into the psychological motivations of their lives. (A favourite play of mine is a large cast play, Das weite Land, adapted by Tom Stoppard in 1979 as UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY.) LA RONDE was castigated for its daring sexual unearthings and alarmed some with its serious intent to promote awareness and discussion, and was essentially banned after its initial publication and was not produced in a theatre until 1920 (in Berlin). Schnitzler was called 'a jewish pornographer' but had received a note from Sigmund Freud saying :"You have learned through intuition - through actually as a result of sensitive introspection - everything that I have had to to unearth by laborious work on other persons.' The play has been, over time, widely produced for theatre and film. The last sensational English adaptation was THE BLUE ROOM, by David Hare, featuring Nicole Kidman, at the Donmar Warehouse, in London.

This literary conceit by Mr Dipietro is an interesting adaptive take, using the gay world of fucking men and their casual practice of sexual encounter, in a daisy chain interconnection collection of scenes across a sociological demarcation of its contemporary times. This play, however, tends to soften the edgy politics of the original preferring a tendency to sentimentalise the men and their engagements with a pathetic tone of 'closeted' neediness and 'murky' well-being. Written in 2009, the content of the play feels a little behind the times in this pathetic colouring that emphasises the self-loathing and the feeling of the shame - helplessness - of these men in their trying to find a way to behave/create a life. Nearly nine years on from the original writing, although, undoubtedly, this reality still exists, the message in contemporary literature and legalities is certainly shifting and ought to be shifted. The witnessing of this play and production, in 2018, after the recent seismic legal shift of our government led by the people of this nation, in their attitude to 'the others' in our world, is certainly not an optimistic or heartening viewpoint.

Staged efficiently by Director and Set Designer, Mark G. Nagle, the production of the play is hampered by his decision to create musical interludes, with Matthew Raven, who sitting at a piano on the side of the stage plays and sings live, between each of the scenes, which are, mostly, soporific in content and musical invention - slowing down the impetus of the storytelling with a grinding, repetitive energy. The acting from the company of men, elicited by Mr Nagle, is adequate but highlights a tendency to play the scene only as written with no sophisticated revelation of motivational history or back-story for the individual characters to give the material any depth of dilemma. We watch and are, consequently, not much concerned. We sit outside the emotional possibilities rather than being immersed in them. We look because we have little to 'read' with either our eyes or ears - to be able to endow. The Costume Design by Krystal Dee is appropriate.

The actors are a handsome lot. Stanley Browning (John), Nick Pes (Steve), Tom Marwick (Marco), Michael Brindley (Kyle), Anthony Finch (Leo), John-Michael Burdon (Jack), Anton Smilek (Ryan), Jackson Blair-West (Sammy), Ray Mainsbridge (Brandon), Pete Walters (Donald).

FUCKING MEN, is the New Theatre contribution to this year's Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras events. Some may find the physicalities of the cast reward enough.