THE THING ABOUT MEN
King's Head Theatre, London N1
Opened 2 May, 2007
**
"So let me get this straight," says a father confessor towards the end
of Act One: "You're an adulterer who's moved in with his unfaithful
wife's non-monogamous lover?" He gives the penitent Tom some Hail Marys
and Our Fathers then goes off for a drink. I know how he felt, and he
didn't even have to face the songs that propel this two-hour piece.
The off-Broadway relationship musical is an over-subscribed genre, at
least on the basis of those instances which cross the Atlantic... and
we must reckon those to be the hardier specimens. Every writing team
wants to create the new Closer Than
Ever or I Love You, You're
Perfect, Now Change. The latter show was written by Jimmy
Roberts and Joe DiPietro, but lightning has not struck twice with their
stage musicalisation of Doris Dörrie's 1985 German comedy film Männer.
The opening number assures us that we are not about to see a
conventional love story, but it does so in such a bouncy way that we
are in little doubt things will end as happily for the central
characters as they ever did for Doris Day and Rock Hudson. Tom (a
commanding Hal Fowler) may be pre-psychotic in his scheme to keep tabs
on his wife's lover by pseudonymously becoming his flatmate; he may
inexplicably find a gorilla mask in the flat's kitchen, with which he
can disguise himself when his wife first visits; he may be proud of his
materialism as a senior advertising executive; but we know that his
heart is in the right place. And gosh, not only does he accidentally
hit upon a way of loosening his wife's grip on lover Sebastian by
effectively turning him from a boho artist into a clone of Tom himself
(in Dörrie's movie the stratagem is deliberate), but he ends up
best buddies with the guy into the bargain. Oh, and of course there are
a few coy references to homoeroticism but it's all dismissed as soon as
mentioned, just an occasion for a knowing giggle.
Knowing giggles are the show's downfall. Everything about it is
self-conscious: the opening number, the convention by which all roles
except the central husband/wife/lover trio are played by one
frantically doubling woman and one even more frenzied man (I
particularly liked Paul Baker as a Mexican cabbie), and above all the
air that this is just a bit of a yarn with a few tunes, nothing to get
too wrapped up in.
And so we don't. (My companion certainly didn't; she left at the
interval.) Then, little by little, a number of us stop laughing with it and start laughing at it. This is not so difficult
when DiPietro writes lyrics such as: "There is a man, and we'll call
him Tom/ Because that's his name, as given by Mom", or "Oh, there's a
road that I hear calling/ And though that road I find appalling/ I'll
take my ass and I'll start hauling..." We know the words are supposed
to be on the silly side, but these are on the Lower East Silly Side.
Anthony Drewe has a long and accomplished career both as a lyricist and
director of comedy musicals, and takes the right tack in his production
here. But, partly due to the material and partly because staging a
musical on the King's Head's postage-stamp stage seems at best an act
of parody in itself, the evening slips from his control. Still, it
could have been worse, to judge by reviews of another American musical
currently on the London stage: it could have been The Thing About Menopause.
Written for the Financial
Times.
Copyright © Ian Shuttleworth; all rights
reserved.
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