Thoughts on men; Men in the Cities and Fake it til' you make it at the Brighton Dome.

Men in the Cities, 1979, Robert Longo.

This Autumn I have seen two performances at the Brighton Dome. Both of these were about men.

It's an odd one though isn't it. This 'new' theme of men.

It makes you go. 'Hang on a minute, I don't understand, I thought everything was about men?'

Hasn't the last 2000 years been about men. Isn't most art about men? Isn't every fucking thing about men?



Yet, you could look at this another way, and I do. Yes all our books are written from a male perspective and governments and businesses, healthcare systems and laws are run from a male perspective. Yet they all present this perspective as the norm, anything outside the patriarchal line is 'other'. It was an anthropologist friend of mine who said; it seems that it is only women who have gender and only homosexuals who have sex.

The theme of 'men' in these two shows, puts men into the category of other, they don't treat men as the norm, but as a subject worth questioning, rather than an invisible structure. They treat 'men' not as something normal or natural or uncontestable; they ask what masculinity is.

Men in the Cities is written and performed and probably directed, no doubt, the egotistical bastard (only joking, he is very talented and probably very generous, I don't know him at all) by Chris Goode (who I always get mixed up with Chris Thorpe). It is a one man show (one man and lots of desk fans) in which Goode performs many characters. I say perform, but I would prefer inhabits, there is none of that, putting on a silly hat or moving his shoulders to a funny angle to indicate 'I'm a different person now.' Instead there are subtle lighting changes, a slight shift in intention and timbre of voice, a change in tone or atmosphere. Never once did I get confused about which particular character he was inhabiting, (although my mum might have). This gave him the feeling of an everyman, not a heteronormative white everyman, but an everyman who represents all the different shades a man could be.

The show is funny. Very funny. Not belly laugh funny, but that kind of funny where you smile and breath through your nose. I did that a lot. Goode is very good at coming up with a recognisably human image. He knows people, he knows what they think, their darkest and most pure thoughts.

Apparently the show was a response to two deaths; the suicide of a young homosexual man and the murder of drummer Lee Rigby on the streets of Woolwich. The picture on the advertising blurb has an American Pscyho feel to it. Sharp suited smiling metrosexual types, with their eyes concealed by a splash of blood red. There is the suggestion of a link between masculinity and violence, masculinity and destruction, both towards the self and towards others. Whilst some of the men he inhabits have conversations many are on their own, talking to themselves or imaginary people. These men are islands. Goode doesn't provide answers, he speculates, and riffs he explodes and calms down. At one point the performance becomes presentational, he becomes himself, the writer unable to write the story of the young mans suicide and thus make it real. He explores here, the metanarrative of the role of writer, not treating this voice as natural and implicit but drawing attention to it. He creates these characters, he kills them and in doing so, he says something about men and who they are. Interestingly, when he becomes himself he surrounds himself with friends, friends who point out the insincerity of his speech, friends who are straight but want to fuck him, and even with these friends, his thoughts eventually disappear inside his head.

At one point, as one of the characters he declares that he empathises with the killers of Lee Rigby, that he sees an honour in their actions. You can't help see an overlapping of the presentational and representational here, Goode expressing his ideas through the character and vice versa.

Whilst the title is literal, in that there are no female voices and all the men in live in the city, yet it is also taken from a series of drawings by Robert Longo, of individual suited men who appear to be falling or fighting or struggling. This theme pervades as does the presence of the city which is described and felt continuously. The man of the country is the man of the body, a man with flow, but men in the cities escape inside their minds and struggle to know what to do with their bodies and the energetic forces that inhabit them.

My friend Jamie, cleverly remembered a Martin Amis quote after watching; 'Cities at night, I feel, contain men, who cry in their sleep and then say nothing'. Amis goes on to say; 'Women-and they can be wives, lovers, gaunt muses, fat nurses, obsessions, devourers, exes, nemeses-will wake and turn to these men and ask, with female need-to-know, "What is it?" And the men will say, "Nothing. No it isn't anything really. Just sad dreams.'

Bryony Kimmings is one of these women. Although Amis may see her as a 'devourer' she wanted to help her fiancé Tim. This is what she asked and kept asking, when she discovered that her fiancé Tim was taking anti depressives. Her Tim who she had just fallen in love with, who she saw as some sort of carnal beast running around the streets of Camden. It was a shock to discover that he was also en thrall to these sad dreams, dreams of suicide even. So she decided to make him talk, to make a show about it and have him on stage his pants. I know, what a woman.

He's quite the looker is Tim and part of you can't help but feel, I know your game Bryony, you little show off. However, despite the exposing nature of such a proposition (and to be fair to Kimmings, she does totally own her selfish motives too, admitting she was thinking about making a show with him pretty early on in the process.) the show is incredibly sensitive and tender and despite Kimmings being a self proclaimed 'loudmouth' the approach was very softly softly.

Tim had two conditions when making the show, one was that he got to learnt to play the guitar and the other was that his face could be covered all times. Kimming's sticks to this and instead of treating it as a limitation she comes up with a whole number of ingenious ways to mask him; my favourite was his 'cloudhead' mask. Kimming's is a totally engaging performer, like Goode she has a great voice, not one of those voices we used to describe as a great voice, those booming RSC voices, but a colourful humane slightly estuary type of voice, she speaks from the heart, isn't afraid to expose her faults and is refreshingly without cynicism. However, it's Tim, when he finally takes off his mask and approaches the mic and speaks to the audience, it his him that really gets you. I remember thinking , they've been doing the show for a while now, in Melbourne and across the country so he must have had to do this loads of times now. I started to think, he must have got used to it, what began as a genuine terror must now have to be acted terror, which must be quite difficult as a non actor. Yet his discomfort at speaking was palpably genuine, the reverse of Goode's eloquence, but equally evocative and equally communicative.

Both shows were very funny, very moving and very heartfelt and very important. Its not enough to speak, you have to mean what you say. Its not enough to make theatre, you have to make theatre that means something. You have to be genuine. Not just our theatre makers, but us too. Sharing our sad dreams, meaning what we say it's what makes us human, it's what makes women women and men and men.