Jez clenches his buttocks, sucks in his stomach and admires his tiny scarlet Gstring in the mirror: "I'm hot, I'm really hot". Having limbered up for a night of athletic sex with his latest trophy girlfriend, he's left high and dry when she cries off at the last minute. There's nothing for it but to hit the bars in search of someone else.
Leonard McCaffer is the Scots actor and co-author who bravely bares his flesh for the tea-time crowd at the International Bar in White Rabbit Cowboys (White Rabbit Cowboy Productions, until October 10th) in which he plays three young-ish, single, men preparing for a Friday night on the town in Edinburgh. With a bouncy soundtrack and interspersed with film clips of urban life, the show is a cleverly scripted hybrid of standup comedy and theatre, humourously satirising (heterosexual) male sexual attitudes.
With a very light touch, McCaffer's exuberant performance reveals these characters' insecurity, competitiveness, isolation and self-deception, with some sharp observations about sexual politics along the way.
JD, "the hard man of software", tanks up with whisky in his bedsit, Spangle stumbles through a fog of marijuana, while Jez is desperate for sex - although this unfortunately necessitates dealing with women: "and when you finally get into her bedroom you have to make friends with a squadron of teddy bears . . . Then he comes clean: "The only thing I hate more than women are couples . . ."
Sexual attitudes, less honestly expressed, also form the substance of a new play, Faithful Place (Space 28, North Lotts) written and directed for Magpie Theatre Company by Louise Lowe. Dramatising the last months in the history of Dublin's notorious red light district, Monto, which, after a concentrated campaign by the Legion Of Mary, was cleared out and closed down in 1928, this ensemble production takes an imaginative approach to its rich subject matter but over two hours fails to bring it fully alive and veers towards caricature.
Against an abstract backdrop, suffused with crimson lighting, the actors create stylised tableaux to evoke the atmosphere of the brothel, presided over by Bella Cohen, the madam who features as a character in Joyce's Ulysses. It highlights the way the Legion Of Mary members and the prostitutes speak entirely different languages - the women are concerned with survival, keeping a roof over their heads and supporting themselves; the men are clutching statuettes of the Virgin Mary, talking about sin, souls, salvation and about being "a good girl". There are some poignant moments, especially when one of the legionnaires becomes emotionally involved with one of the women and then rejects her.
But the themes are laboured, some of the performances very weak indeed and the pacing flags, contributing to an overall sense of flatness.
The Fringe Information Office is in Arthouse, Curved Street, Temple Bar. The Fringe phone number is: 01-605 6833 and information is available on these websites: www.fringefest.com and www.dkm.ie/events
Opening tonight Main Festival: By The Bog of Cats by Marina Carr at the Abbey Theatre Fringe: Couleurs de Femme, Compagnie Yun Chane (Reunion Islands), Project@The Mint, 6.15 p.m.; Rise and Fall of a Boyband, Essential Theatre Company, (Ireland), Tallaght Theatre, 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. Workshops: Shibboleth Theatre Company (UK), City Arts Centre, 10 a.m.; Cartoon de Salvo (UK), City Arts Centre, 10 a.m.
Recommended: Conleth Hill gives a stunning performance in The Starving by Andrew Hinds, at the Crypt at 8 p.m. until Saturday.
