Four women stand on stage wearing earpieces. They hear the words of real men interviewed by playwright Gary McNair and relay them back to us. Those men – doctors, cabbies, gym bunnies and manual workers – spring into life as their words spew across the stage.
“The best thing that comes out of a woman’s mouth is your knob, I would say, aye.” “They’re only good for being in the kitchen … make my dinner then give me my hole, and then go to your bed.” For an hour the words are relentless, as the voices swirl around, reinforcing and supporting each other. Always there and never challenged. But it’s all right, isn’t it? It’s only locker room banter.
That’s how some defended Donald Trump when a recording surfaced of him bragging about how he liked to “grab” women “by the pussy”. McNair set out to discover how widespread this sort of talk was by taking his dictaphone into places where men gather, asking them how they talk about women and recording their words with anonymity guaranteed. Hundreds of hours of conversation have been whittled down to an hour, with a post-show discussion an integral part of every performance. The show received a one-off performance as part of the Edinburgh fringe.
“It’s more about the tone that you say something … When we say it, everybody knows it’s a joke,” remarks one of the interviewees. It’s a refrain that returns again and again: boys are just being boys and it’s OK, particularly when they’re out of earshot of women. Even the men who feel uncomfortable about it aren’t going to challenge their mates over it.
It’s hard to listen to this relentless and toxic catalogue of misogyny. Probably as much for many men as it is for the women in the audience. While it’s never comfortable, it’s always fascinating. And by using female actors – Maureen Carr, Jamie Marie Leary, Joanna Tope and Rachael Spence – the show increasingly shines a light on the uncertainties of the interviewees and their confusions and fears over what it means to be a man.
