Recent Articles
Showing posts with label homoeroticism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label homoeroticism. Show all posts
Monday, October 5, 2015
Monday, October 5, 2015
- 0 Comments
Every entry to 5 Guys Chillin' comes with a free johnny and pouch of lube. This is a suitable harbinger to a show that communicates a dizzyingly varied amount of ways for guys to stick their dicks in one another.
Aside from the obvious (anal, oral etc), we get detailed descriptions of bondage slings, watersports, fisting and even a multi-man merry-go-round spit roasting device. This is all couched in a woozy narcotic soup; nostrils tingling with the buzz of mandy, coke-addled brains twitching to life and teeth grinding to dust under the loving eyes of tina.
The titular '5 Guys' (all un-named) are played by Elliot Hadley, Tom Holloway, Damien Hughes, Michael Matrovski and Shri Patel. We meet them as they prepare to embark on a 'chill'; a lengthy fucking and drugs session in one of their flats. Shorn of a clear narrative, the 80 minute play is composed of; lengthy discussions in orgy etiquette (don't spend all night on your phone, don't gobble all the host's Viagra, don't invite friends over without asking); the ethics of STD infections and HIV transmission in group sex; a paean to recreational drug use; and the most outrageous stories each of them has.
Taken as a straight play this avalanche of hedonism would quickly become tiring. But 5 Guys Chilling is verbatim theatre - i.e. the script is composed of extracts from interviews. This allows the play to sidestep accusations of sensationalism and claim verisimilitude in documenting a the chemsex gay subculture.
Even so, there comes a moment about half-way when the pervy fun of watching fit gay guys cavorting around in harnesses and zip-up jock-straps starts to wear a bit thin. It's like getting used to a hot bath, and you get a bit blase as you watch yet another round of spit n' thrust buggery. But mid-way through there's a subtle change of gear as the physical thrills of stimulants and sex begin to take their toll.
One of the most successful moments is a touching monologue from Shri Patel about what it's like to be a gay Pakistani. Drawing back to more emotionally sincere territory, he explains that as his parent's only son there are incredibly strong societal pressures on him to get married, have children and take care of his elderly parents. Combining a vigorously active sex life with a traditional Muslim marriage sounds next to impossible, making his guide through this deadly (sadly probably literally) minefield utterly fascinating.
All the characters get these moments of sober honesty. We hear about times when things got too heavy even for these bold sexual pioneers. Being trussed up in a sling in a bondage club and then gang-raped; threatened at knife-point in your own home by a meth-addled psycho; your attention span shrinking as drugs mushify your mind; even the straightforward loss of intimacy and excitement that comes from indulging in pleasure to the exclusion of all else.
By the time the curtain falls the five men have become burnt out zombies. One man's face is smeared with blood, his mucous membranes having finally collapsed under a crystallised onslaught. Two more are blank-faced zoned out on the sofa, spikes dangling from their veins. Another is pale-faced and hunched, rocking back and forth, next to the motionless body of someone recovering from a seizure.
It's a painfully accurate dramatisation of how drug-induced euphoria contrasts with the inevitable comedown, when you've finally exhausted your serotonin reserves and your muscles ache from overexertion. But 5 Guys Chilling isn't ending on a note of condemnation, but with the intelligent, truthful portrayal of the effects of excess. Perhaps most notably, it leaves the audience to judge whether the highs are worth the crushing lows.
I've got to admit, for the first twenty to thirty minutes I had some reservations. I suspected that whatever substance there was to the play was in service of providing several good-looking nearly naked young men for the primarily gay male audience to ogle. I also found it initially lacking in comparison to the King's Head's recent production of Fucking Men, which successfully wove sexual thrills into social commentary.
Fortunately the gradual shift in tone towards introspection and consequences won me over. On a basic level it's refreshing to see theatre so at ease with sexuality and drug use, leaving prudery firmly at the stage door. But importantly, 5 Guys Chilling not only entertained but informed (teaching me some interesting things about non-detectable HIV transmission rates).
It'd be all too easy to stage a paper-thin, cock-hardeningly-pornographic exploration of this subculture. But 5 Guys Chilling goes deeper asking what it really means to be a 21st century libertine.
★★★★
5 Guys Chilling is at the King's Head Theatre until 24 October. Tickets here.
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
- 0 Comments
It's darkly ironic that the part of Liberace's life that he desperately tried to keep secret has come to define him. His career has been all but obliterated from popular culture, we're never likely to ever see a Best of Liberace album top the charts. This is despite his enormous fame - for two decades he was the highest-paid entertainer in the world. Yet as I sat down to watch Behind the Candelabra the only things I knew about Liberace were that he played the piano, that he dressed extravagantly on stage and that he was astonishingly, obviously, colossally gay and his fans were just too plain dumb to realise.
Thursday, May 2, 2013
Thursday, May 2, 2013
- 0 Comments
I’m So Excited! is a pretty damn apt title. Everything and everyone is ‘excited’, in the most salacious possible way. The (paper-thin) plot concerns a jet with a landing gear malfunction seeking a runway to land on. With the economy class drugged into unconsciousness, the majority of the action takes place in business class, the steward’s kitchen and the cockpit. As the passengers sit contemplating their impending fiery death, three air stewards try their best to take their minds off their situation.
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
- 0 Comments
They say it’s the film with the longest ever theatrical run. When you look at the other contenders, you realise they’re probably right. Star Wars ran for 44 weeks, E.T. ran for over a year, but The Rocky Horror Picture Show has been screened continuously in cinemas since 1975 - a theatrical release of about 38 years. Pretty good for a bizarro glam-rock pansexual musical that was a colossal flop when it opened.
Friday, January 4, 2013
Friday, January 4, 2013
- 0 Comments
As Alex and his droogs first make their way onto the stage you'd be forgiven for having some reservations. Kubrick's iconic film lingers in the mind, and at first glance these guys look a little stage-y. They're lithe, twirling about the stage with the precise, mannered movements of a dancer. As they launch into a tightly choreographed dance-fight against Billyboy's gang my concerns grew. Everything looked a little fey, over mannered. Where was the blood, the pleasure in inflicting pain - the ultraviolence?
Soon after, someone's being raped with a broken bottle, and you begin to appreciate the raw power and and muscularity of the production, directed by Alexandra Spencer-Jones. This is helped, in large part by the gobsmackingly amazing performance of Martin McCreadie as Alex. Up until this point I'd assumed that it was almost impossible to play Alex as anything other than a spin on Malcolm McDowell . But McCreadie manages to encapsulate not only a genuinely threatening physical presence, but also a loveable impishness that shines through even when he's committing the most sadistic scenes of violence.
 |
| Martin McCreadie as Alex |
It's a difficult task finding the balance in Alex. He's our protagonist and much of the play's latter half relies on us having at least some sympathy with his plight, but then how are we to come to love a vicious little git "whose principle interests are rape, ultra-violence and Beethoven"? McCreadie's Alex, even in his most despicable moments, still somehow manages to keep a shred of charm. So when we see him bent double in pain, every muscle straining, sweat pouring down his face as he undergoes the Ludovico technique our sympathies remain with him. Sure he's a psychopath, but Alex makes a kind of sense as a reaction to his environment, a world of grotesque caricatures and the worst kinds of little-Englanders.
In some regards, McCreadie's Alex is more threatening and effective than McDowell's purely because you're in the same room as him. The Soho Theatre is not a particularly big space, and during his monologues Alex speaks directly to us. When he glares up at us with those
black-rimmed eyes, his body tense and coiled you feel a little involuntary
thrill of fear, rather than being separated from us by both a cinema screen and
40 years here is Alex DeLarge standing in front of you and it’s utterly
magnetic.
 |
| The Ludovico Technique |
The rest of the cast acquit themselves similarly well. They constantly change roles, as Alex's droogs they're petulant, sinuous and overtly sexual in a spidery way. I was surprised at how funny this adaptation was; many of these minor roles are played in an extremely exaggerated manner, at times approaching a sort of warped pantomime. While the play dips more and more into the absurd after Alex has been institutionalised, it never detracts from the more serious themes.
This adaptation brings the homoerotic elements of the text to the fore, intertwining them with the violence that Alex inflicts upon those around him. It's an overtly gay adaptation, featuring an all-male cast of buff men who spend an inordinate amount of time topless and sweaty. Everyone on stage is beautiful, something accentuated by the sharp makeup, styled hair and costumes seem designed to show off the actors muscles as they fight and fuck their way through the text. The play is so effective in making these homoerotic elements work that when we get to the scene where the success of Alex's aversion therapy is tested, the artfully posing man they send in is equally and obviously as valid an object of desire for Alex as any woman might be.
 |
| Magic Alex |
This cocktail of homoeroticism, violence and sadomasochism is more reminiscent of Andy Warhol's adaptation of 'A Clockwork Orange': 'Vinyl' than anything Kubrick came up with. In Warhol's (incredibly loose) adaptation we see our young protagonist stripped to the waist and whipped while forced to watch violent movies that are described to us rather than shown directly. This play uses a similar device, describing horrific imagery to us rather than showing it directly. It's a clever device, one which forces us to become complicit in the Ludovico technique. As the cast recite graphic descriptions of atrocities we cannot help but visualise them ourselves, creating our own miniature horrorshows far worse than anything they could reasonably get away with on stage.
This production keeps things relevant, and when the text fortuitously references young people rioting in London, it neatly links us to a modern equivalent of Alex's behaviour. Watching disaffected, masked youths smashing in the windows of high street shops and taking what they want is utterly terrifying, but on a symbolic level it's a kind of catharsis The text of 'A Clockwork Orange' is in no danger of entirely losing its edge, but tapping into this modern mixture of fear and anarchistic thrills helps make 'A Clockwork Orange' seem less fantastic and more contemporary.
Another similarity to Warhol's 'Vinyl' is a great pop soundtrack, something that helps anchor this production in the modern day; for example, rather than a violent beating being soundtracked to 'Singin' in the Rain', we get 'Standing in the Way of Control' by Gossip. Later we get scenes set to the Scissor Sisters and Placebo. It adds a level of recognisably camp deviance to proceedings, these are things a modern audience can readily identify with, dragging us further into the world this staging of 'A Clockwork Orange' creates.
So if this production is so desperate to bring 'A Clockwork Orange' into the modern day, what does it actually have to say about modern youth? I don't think there is a convincing modern analogue for the Ludovico technique, but the notion of a government happy to employ those who enjoy inflicting violence rings true. After Alex's release he bumps into his former droogs, now gainfully employed as policemen. As they sadistically kick Alex in the guts it brings to mind the self righteous uniformed killers of Jean Charles de Menezes and Ian Tomlinson.
 |
| Milk+ |
This production uses the original (and somewhat more optimistic) ending of the book. We see an older Alex with a new trio of droogs (all ominously wearing hoodies), but we see that he's begun to outgrow his taste for violence. The text rejects forcing a morality upon others, and shows us that a greater sense of maturity naturally leads to a decline in desire for violence. He introduces us to his new partner and seems genuinely in love, ready to move towards a tentatively brighter future. As a epilogue I've always felt it was a bit unnecessary. Seeing a grown-up, matured Alex makes him seem a bit neutered, as if his impulses and actions were 'merely' growing pains. I prefer the implication at the end of the US version of the book and Kubrick's film, that Alex is less an expression of teenage angst and more something endemic to humanity, a dark, violent thing that lurks on the edges of our collective consciousness.
It's a tremendous production, one of the most compelling I've seen on stage in a long time. It sustains a fast-paced, muscular intensity throughout, and the overtly erotic elements create a compelling link between sexual urges and to the desire to inflict violence. The whole thing is held together by a god-damn amazing performance by Martin McCreadie, who brings Alex DeLarge to terrifying life in front of our eyes. If it goes on tour, make sure to go and see it as it's finishing up in the Soho Theatre tomorrow.
'A Clockwork Orange' is on 4th and 5th of January at The Soho Theatre, London, returns only.
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Thursday, May 17, 2012
- 0 Comments
Part I in an examination of filmic villains.
Bennett – Commando
(1985) directed by Mark L. Lester
Commando is the
most pared down of all 1980s action films. The plot is matchstick
thin. Bad guys have kidnapped Arnold Schwarzengger’s daughter. Arnie’s got to
get her back! Playing the preposterously named ‘John Matrix’, he stomps around
(frequently shirtless), physically living up to his description as a “condom
full of walnuts” to a bizarre synth n’ steel drum soundtrack.
Almost everyone
talks up the homoerotic subtext to this film, I refuse to do this. The homoeroticism
is blatantly part of the overt text. Arnie is depicted as the epitome of masculinity – he effortlessly dispatches most of the bad guys, variously portrayed as
sleazy yuppies or faceless Latin-American soldiers. He needs a nemesis, someone who can
match him in a mano a mano physical brawl. Enter Bennett.
 |
| "I can beat you! I don't need the girl HAHAHA! I DON'T NEED THE GIRL!" |
Bennett, played by
Vernon Wells, is a strange yet somehow appropriate nemesis for Arnie. Despite his oiled up posing and huge
phallic guns, as a character, Matrix’s sexuality is deeply, deeply repressed in the
film. We never see, or even hear mention of, his daughter’s mother, and there is zero
romantic chemistry with his spunky female sidekick.
Bennett on the
other hand, is explicitly portrayed as a twisted ball of violent, aggressive
homosexuality who wants nothing more than to stick his knife into our hero. Saying that
he’s a bit gay is like saying Niagara Falls is a bit wet. If Arnie is every red-blooded
Reaganite’s muscles and guns power fantasy, then Bennett is their 3am nightmare,
waking them to soiled sheets and panicky self-justifications.
 |
| "You want to know something? When I found out I could get my hands on you, I said I'd do it for nothing." |
Just look at the
guy! It’s like a checklist of 1980s cliché gayness – he’s got the Village People
moustache, a bizarre chain mail vest, a vaguely bondagey chain around his neck.
He sweatily inhabits every scene he’s in, frequently becoming furious, tumescent
and red – as if his podgy body is becoming one giant throbbing erection. He’s the
kind of grotesque caricature that dances lasciviously in the dreams of self-hating right-wing bigots.
 |
| "I can kill you John!!" |
Finally it comes
down to it. In the hot and humid basement of the bad guy’s lair they square off, knife
against knife. Inevitably, our Aryan superman defeats Bennett by ramming a steamy
pipe into him. No comment.
 |
| "Let off some steam, Bennett." |
The nightmare
dragon of homosexuality slain, our hero hops in his chopper to a happy new familial
future. Bennett may be dead and gone, but I like to imagine him living on in John
Matrix’s consciousness, forever taking revenge by popping into his mind during every
depressingly puritan bout of bad sex.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
