Review: MEN’S BUSINESS, Finborough Theatre
Photo credit: Rio Redwood-Sawyerr
The latest world premiere from the Finborough Theatre is Simon Stephen’s new translation of Franz Xaver Kroetz’s Men’s Business. This play pitches itself as ‘a love story set in the back room of a butcher’s shop’ – a description that should be taken up with the advertising standards authority for its inaccuracy. There is not a trace of love in this play – there is violence and cruelty and manipulation, and altogether a remarkable lack of feeling.
The central relationship between Charlie (Lauren Farrell) and Victor (Rex Ryan) is entirely baffling. Charlie is the victim of a relentless barrage of vitriol from Victor, a steel worker with very set, conservative ideas about women and relationships. Charlie prostrates herself before Victor and swallows his cruelty. It’s infuriating and confusing to watch this cycle of abuse and subjugation that repeats itself relentlessly for 90-minutes. There are usually motivating factors that bind together abusive and co-dependent couples in life but there is seemingly nothing between these two. There’s a lack of spark and passion even in their disgust and the hatred for each other.
Perhaps the disjointed feel of this production is a result of the layers of translation through which the play has been processed – an English translation of a literal translation of a mid-century German play, produced by an Irish company and now transferred onto a London stage. This is just one theory about why this play doesn’t quite hang together satisfactorily. Another could be that the central conceit – an ‘ugly’ woman letting herself be abused consistently and relentlessly – doesn’t demand 90 minutes of theatre.
The Finborough Theatre auditorium has often been described as ‘intimate’ but the term has probably never been used so literally as describing Men’s Business, which is peppered with sex scenes and nudity. It’s intensely confronting to be at most a couple of metres away from that kind of exposure. We couldn’t help but notice that there isn’t an intimacy coordinator listed in the programme – and for some of the most intense sex scenes that we have seen on any London stage, this rings an alarm bell. Intimacy coordinators – or notes about intimacy coordination – are there for the reassurance of the audience as well as the benefit of the actors, and something about that absence is profoundly discomforting.
All this being said, the Finborough lives up to its consistently brilliant standard of design in this production. Jess F. Kane’s lighting design in particular is astonishing; the use of coloured fluorescents - particularly in the bloody, final climax of the play - is inspired.
Credit too has to be given to Cooper the dog who makes a celebrated star cameo for one scene in the play and is an unmitigated good boy.
Aside from some cool lighting and a fluffy German Shepherd, there unfortunately isn’t much to recommend this play. The actors do their best with a jolting script but ultimately Men’s Business isn’t what London theatre needs at the moment. This show is a dated picture of apathy and nihilism, wrought with misogyny.
Don’t be lured in by the dog, however charming he may be.
** Two stars
Reviewed by: Livvy Perrett
Men’s Business plays at London’s Finborough Theatre until 12 April, with further info here.
