Theatre review: Fucking Men

The King's Head revives their biggest hit of recent years, Fucking Men, in a new production by Geoffrey Hyland. Of course if the sweary title - evidently a theme this year - isn't enough to draw the crowds in, maybe writer Joe DiPietro's higher profile, with Memphis still a hit, can only help. The inspiration is Arthur Schnitzler's much-adapted La Ronde, which follows men and women in a series of sexual encounters that eventually form a circle. DiPietro's is an all-gay millennial take on the story, each scene taking place before and after a sexual encounter between two men, one of whom will move on to the next one. So we open with the Soldier (Harper James,) who's heard of a rent-boy who hangs out by the barracks. Protesting his heterosexuality and masculinity all the time, he pays for his first blow job from a man.

Theatre review: Between

Oskar Brown and Nicholas Campbell perform vignettes from three gay-themed stories although, as Between goes on, it seems increasingly likely that these are all parts of the same person's story. Brown is also the writer of this South African two-hander directed by Geoffrey Hyland, which adds to the feeling that there's something autobiographical to the strands. They include an actor in a long-term relationship that's falling apart - Brown plays the actor whose boyfriend at first feels neglected sexually, but later emotionally as well. Elsewhere Brown is an acting coach and Campbell his student, trying to rehearse Sonnet 23 ("As an unperfect actor on the stage...") for an audition, but finding it hard to relate to Shakespeare's words - or possibly not wanting to give away quite how much he does relate to them.