27 March 2025
Men’s Business, based on the 1972 play Mannersache by German playwright Franz Xaver Kroetz in a new translation by Olivier Award winning Simon Stephens (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time), arrives at the Finborough via a run in Dublin by Glass Mask Theatre. It was without any doubt one of the toughest watches of any show I’ve seen in the past 50 years and for once I was actually grateful to be in the back row as far away from the action on stage as possible.
It all takes place in the claustrophobic back room of a butcher’s shop (impressive set by Andrew Clancy), where Charlie (Lauren Farrell) chops joints of meat, extracting the edible from the gristle and tripe. She longs for love and thinks she might have found it with steelworker Victor (Rex Ryan). But he’s a repellent brute who appears to actively hate women and thinks that physically hurting a woman during sex equates to giving her a orgasm. He becomes obsessed with her German Shepherd dog and wonders – aloud – if it might be giving her more sexual pleasure than himself. He’s a pretty fucked up individual, but she appears blinkered to his faults and is happy to go along with his coersive and corrosive behaviour. Maybe they deserve each other, but it makes for grim viewing, not helped by clunky transitjons between scenes as the actors dress themselves (again) after yet another bought of cringeworthy sex.
This is grim, gratuitous in-yer-face theatre at its most extreme with nudity, threat of violence and souless mechanical sex thrust repeatedly upon the audience. But to what effect? As Charlie repeatedly degrades herself this play actually left me feeling quite depressed.
Fair play to the two actors, though, who give totally committed performances in uncompromising, ugly roles.
