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: Lear (Lazarus/Greenwich Theatre)

Following their creative take on Dido, Queen of Carthage I decided to catch Lazarus' companion show in the final performance of their Greenwich rep season. This is Shakespeare's Lear - the character's title dropped because here Lear is a woman. Jennifer Shakesby is the monarch who divides her kingdom between her daughters, only to find that their gratitude isn't quite what she expected, and once you've given away all your power the respect suddenly disappears as well. Ricky Dukes' production uses a heavily edited version of the text - the Fool has been excised completely - but has changed few of the gender pronouns: Lear is referred to as "she" and "mother," but her title remains "King" and she is still addressed as "sir." Of course post-Battlestar Galactica that's a perfectly acceptable form of address.

Theatre review: Dido, Queen of Carthage

While I still live a stone's throw from Greenwich Theatre I might as well make use of it, and as I do like a bit of Marlowe Dido, Queen of Carthage was a good bet. It's playing in repertory with Lear in productions by director-designer Ricky Dukes, from Lazarus Theatre Company, with a pretty large ensemble cast.

A handful of Trojan survivors escape the fall of Troy, led by the demigod Aeneas (Joseph Tweddle,) but are shipwrecked off the coast of Libya. Aeneas' mother, the love-goddess Venus (Lucy Hagan-Walker,) comes up with a plan to save her son: She'll put a love spell on the queen of the area, Dido (Alice Brown.) Smitten with Aeneas, Dido will do anything he wants - like repair his ships. But once that's done and he prepares to sail for Italy, Carthage is still left with a powerful woman under a love spell, who's been spurned by the object of her affection.