This review appeared in the Times for a play I’m acting in. Just thought I’d let you kids know. Come along. It’s fun.
The theatre is very intimate, it’s almost like an Edinburgh Fringe venue, which is sweet. And very warm. The UK ignores air conditioning, like it’s Black Magic. The play’s writing is good, I think, and I’m kind of loving playing this character. He’s an aging playwright using sex for approval, so the research was rough. But oddly, he feels familiar. I haven’t been on a legitimate (my mother’s word) theatrical stage in a very long time, and doing someone else’s writing felt awkward and foreign at first. But now it’s like a vacation. I just show up at work, do my bit and the show ends at 9 pm. The audience response has been very supportive and all my friends have liked the play. It’s all quite different from a comedy gig, where I fight my self-imposed, neurotic battles, stumbling from gig to gig, until i wander home, exhausted. Now i have a drink in the pub after, giggling with actors and sipping white wine. It’s sort of classy. Posh. Almost like the grown up job I’ve been looking for.
From The Times
May 29, 2008
F***ing Men at Finborough 4 STARS
Tim Teeman
It’s a hard sell, imagining the Finborough’s postage stamp-sized stage to be a whirligig of locations in which a group of New York gay men sleep with and seduce one another; each encounter subtly, sometimes radically, changing their lives. But under Phil Willmott’s direction, the stage manages to convince as sauna, hotel room, house and apartment. Each encounter in Joe DiPietro’s play (it is a contemporary take on La Ronde) is all too plausible and, given that only half the actors are American, all the accents are pretty faultless too.
Half the fun is watching who ends up with whom. Both the prostitute John (Shai Metuki) and the handsome lecturer Marco (Chris Polick) encounter the closeted beefcake soldier Steve (Nicholas Keith) whose anguished outpourings in a sauna may – depending on your sexual tastes – occupy you less than his six-pack.
DiPietro is interested in how gay men have sex, meet for sex, use sex, and trade in sex. One couple, played by Morgan James and Timothy Lone, love each other but cheat on the quiet. What use is monogamy, one of them wonders – and while you may be swayed by his argument you believe their mutual devotion is for real. The bombastic title doesn’t match the tone of the play, which is more wordy and thoughtful than violent and shocking.
The comedian Scott Capurro is Sammy, a screenwriter who can’t believe his luck when a secretly gay Hollywood star, Brandon (Guy Fearn), comes on strong. Capurro plays Sammy astutely, half for laughs and half not, and his exposure of Brandon in the press leads to the actor’s off-stage confession on the talk-show host Donald’s (Patrick Poletti) show. In turn, Donald is frozen by the death of an old lover and employs John for sex.
Di Pietro’s conclusion – gay love and desire are jolly complex and not easily defined – is wittily conveyed. And if that message doesn’t drive you wild, the lack of clothing just might.
Box office: 0844 8471652. To Jun 7 2008