Theatre review: Fucking Men

A big fringe hit a few years back, Joe DiPietro's Fucking Men is a take on Arthur Schnitzler's La Ronde, the controversial 1920 play about a series of one-night stands that form a circle of people who find different kinds of comfort or release in sex. I don't think DiPietro's is the only version to have ever made the leap of adapting the story for gay characters, but it seems to have been by far the most successful. Past productions have been quite luxurious in their casting, with a different actor playing each of the ten characters, but some things have changed since 2008, including fringe venues' attitudes towards actually paying actors, so for Steve Kunis' revival at Waterloo East we get a cast of four, taking two or three parts each. Alex Britt, Charlie Condou, Derek Mitchell and Stanton Plummer-Cambridge are the cast taking on a series of variously sexy, funny and sad scenes.

Theatre review: Straight White Men

If Straight White Men are the demographic who've historically held all the power and are still trying to ensure things stay that way, Korean-American playwright Young Jean Lee's play of the same name is an outsider's perspective on what it might look like to have that power, or at the very least the assumption that it's a deserved birthright, eroded. In many ways Straight White Men is That American Play Where An Extended Family Gets Together After A Long Time, Preferably At Thanksgiving But That’s Optional, complete with the must-have accessory of a character who's a writer with one reasonably successful book under his belt, who teaches at a university for his day job and is struggling to write the second. Instead of Thanksgiving the occasion for this reunion is Christmas, and widower Ed (Simon Rouse) is excited to have all three of his adult sons back at home with him for a few days.

Theatre review: Next Fall

After the all-out energy of In The Heights, director Luke Sheppard returns to Southwark Playhouse - the Little space this time - with something a lot more intimate and thoughtful. In Geoffrey Nauffts' Next Fall, Adam (Charlie Condou) has been living with boyfriend Luke (Martin Delaney) for a few years, and their relationship seems strong despite a major point of disagreement that's persisted since the day they met: Adam is an atheist but Luke is a committed, Evangelical Christian who has managed to reconcile his sexuality with his faith, and is still hopeful of converting his boyfriend. Their relationship is told in flashback, as we first meet Adam in a hospital waiting room after his partner's been in a serious car accident. His friend Holly (Sirine Saba) is little support in the face of Luke's bigoted father Butch.