a bit of bonhomie

Jack the Lad, by Matt Harris, is one of the queerest theatrical experiences I’ve ever enjoyed. Hard-edged, disturbing, sexual, at times baffling, shocking and a little trippy, Harris has mangled the Jack and the Beanstalk children’s story and turned it into a deliciously deviant 75-minute nightmare.This Jack, a practiced, jaded, driven rent-boy, unforgettably played by Alister Barton, happens to chime one of my own favourite character chords in drama – the motif of the naif, the innocent young man. How can a rent-boy be innocent? How can this manipulative, seductive, exploitative hardcore fetishist be naive? One only needs to have known rent-boys to understand this paradox, and this play is rooted in a gritty realistic understanding of male sexual fantasy, and those who buy and sell this volatile commodity.

The play could only have been set in London, not only because of Jack’s council-flat Estuary accent: his wide-boy handsome looks and attitude is pure London, and his class-conscious rage at childhood poverty is unmistakably English. But at heart this is an archetypal story of violation, of abuse, of theft, a darkly Freudian journey through the underworld, a young man’s search for the Giant, both within and without.

The tale is expertly told by the cast of three – Donna King playing both Jack’s shadowy feckless single mother, Dolly, and Lola, the Giant’s lacy drug-fucked moll. Giant, whom we never see, is some sort of East-End gangster figure, living in luxury at the top of Stalk Towers. Preece Killick plays a bewildering variety of Jack’s punters with aplomb, desperate for Jack’s not-so-tender ministrations. (The Irish priest character, however, worked less well than it might have in Dublin, with a curiously jarring orgasmic exclamation of “I hate the English” – but then Irish sexual darkness is a mythical journey in a league of its own.) Most touching of his scenes was as Harry, a married punter Jack plays cops with, and Jack tries to turn him into a lover, trying to kiss him, begging him to make love to him as he does his wife. The punter’s disgust at the idea echoes Jack’s own self-loathing.

“Being queer is the worst thing one can be” Jack laments. We understand something about it when he talks about his schooldays – “Girls ignored me because they couldn’t have me, the boys bullied me until they knew they could”. This brutalization is perhaps behind his fetishisation of violence – “nothing is sexier than a violent man” he says. But it’s not until the play’s hypnotic grand guignol ending that we get to the heart of what disturbs/torments his soul.

“We all make our own hell, eventually” says Jack. I’m not sure that’s true; but if, like me, you value creative attempts to portray our darkest desires and fantasies, then this haunted, pervy and gripping play, directed confidently by Phil Setren, is for you.

As the audience recovered from Jack the Lad, the set was stripped bare, and we trooped back in to experience a very different take on sexual fantasy. I felt for Jimmy Shaw, the sole performer in Dream Man, by the late James Carroll Pickett, because it was extremely difficult for him to follow the melodrama of the first half of this double bill at the Project. I imagine the reason behind the scheduling was practical, to do with the time needed to set up the first show – but I could have found a lot more to enjoy in this play if it had come first. In a way, I’d already climaxed. It’s hard sometimes when someone still wants to talk to you, after that.Increasingly I am becoming aware of how strongly culture influences our sexual tastes, what is erotic in one culture, what can get a man’s blood pumping to a particular sound or sight or scenario, can leave others puzzled and unstirred. An American friend of mine cringes when Europeans attempt to talk dirty to him while having sex – which is exactly how I feel when I am with Americans who attempt the same thing. Context is all. Shared cultural and sexual references are necessary to get a buzz going erotically. Of course I realise that’s not something others are necessarily going to agree with, but it goes some way to explain why I found Dream Man a curiously flat experience.

Set in the era in America in the late eighties, Christopher is a fantasist, a man who weaves erotic tales to order on the telephone, riding the crest of the AIDS panic, making a living of men’s loneliness. In his various conversations, he eloquently spins tales to arouse his clients, having been clued into what they are into beforehand. He has regulars, he takes pride in how well he can bring newbies to climax, and, as in Jack the Lad, we learn just how gothic and self-destructive sexual fantasy can be. In between his clients, he also has conversations with his ex-lover Billy, who is getting drunk in a bar somewhere, pleading with Christopher to come and get him. We learn of their life-long love story, of Billy’s transition from being a young “greasemonkey” of a gas-pump attendant in Kentucky, to a coiffeured self-absorbed clone, throwing his life away with drink drugs and sex.

I wonder why this play was resurrected – for all the accomplished talent that Jimmy Shaw evidently has, I felt it hard to connect with the material, emotionally or erotically. And yet I’m glad I saw it, as a snapshot of a time and a place when the “plague of despair” was at its height.

Venue: PROJECT ARTS CENTRE
Dates:- MON. 7th – SAT 12th MAY
Time: 8pm
Double Bill Tickets: €18 for the two shows (Conc. €16)
(Sat Matinee @ 3pm €14)