Writer Rob Hayes likes to sum things up in a play’s title, as he did with his 2014 Edinburgh festival hit, Awkward Conversations With Animals I’ve Fucked. The title of his new show, a triptych of intertwining monologues directed by Clive Judd, is not an understatement. It offers an uncomfortable portrait of masculinity hitting the toilet bowl.
Or rather, not hitting it. One of the three young men portrayed by Ben Whybrow is Misery Guts who, when his heart is broken, finds his sphincter is unable to function. It gives new meaning to the term “gut feelings”.
Whybrow’s performance, played out on a raised platform, bare but for a toilet and a light bulb, is relentless and undeniably impressive. Anyone entering the theatre without knowing that the script breaks down into three interweaving parts might miss the differentiations between them. Perhaps this is the point: that the misogynistic nightclub prowler Meat Cute, the anxious jingle writer This Pain, and the constipated, abandoned lover all lurk inside the modern man, who is an emotional mess. The three characters here could be the same man at different points in his life.
Male mental health is high on the theatrical agenda at the moment and This Will End Badly is a strong addition to the field. The writing is often impressive, although Hayes can’t quite sustain its intensity for the duration, as if, like Misery Guts himself, he is straining to get things out. But when it’s good, it’s very good. Very nasty, too, and quite exhausting to watch. But while it seems brutally honest, it doesn’t quite manage to make you really feel for the protagonists.
• At Southwark Playhouse, London, until 6 February. Box office: 020-7407 0234.
