A shoulder-padded man with an Edna Mode bob and a thick moustache somersaults onstage oozing testosterone, bravado and thinly veiled mediocrity. He could be any number of pseudo-intellectual auteurs, damaged poets with shelves full of Ernest Hemingway or mediocre artists with more ego than talent (but always time to play devil’s advocate when discussing Pablo Picasso). The author of four cookbooks, fourteen films and countless plays, he’s a male genius here to talk about his newest theatrical ‘masterpiece’: Fat Cunt.
So begins Masterclass, a wry interrogation of gender, power and art from the Dublin-based Brokentalkers theatre company. It’s Inside the Actor’s Studio meets Between Two Ferns; a surrealist skewering of patriarchal power that aims the near-farcical ways men – from well-meaning allies to toxic artistes – achieve, preserve and weaponise power in an increasingly 'woke' world.
Adrienne Truscott is our brooding male genius, the "perennial Mr. Nasty of American Theatre", interviewed by co-writer Feidlim Cannon in a glorious brunette perm. Along with Gary Keegan, the trio has constructed a playful hour-long two-hander that unfurls in complex layers; each scene peeling back another aspect of contemporary gender dynamics alongside a new theatrical style.
But the show doesn’t quite ace the landing. Despite creative stagecraft and expert physicality from its two leads, stale technical elements and some aged generalisations compromise the potency of its ideas. It teases with provocative and interesting questions about entitlement and privilege but too often pulls back from opportunities to deepen its interrogation or better marry it to the theatrical style it uses to represent it.
Beginning as a tongue-in-cheek interview with our male ingenue, Masterclass quickly devolves into a violent lecture that blurs the line between dream and reality. Our male genius is playing golf with a double-barrel shotgun one moment and justifying his misogyny the next. The script is full of moments of pithy wordplay furnished by the all-too-common talking points of the toxic misogynist; a masterclass in casual sophistry.
Truscott and Cannon are incredibly technical performers. Subtle tics of expression and physicality are nuanced and sharply honed, but more time is needed to translate their performance style into Malthouse’s large Merlyn Theatre. Their performances often fail to reach beyond the first two rows. Moments of slapstick humour (complemented by expert sound design by Jennifer O'Malley) are welcome additions in the show’s first act. But much of the production's most interesting provocations hinge on a metatheatrical turn to naturalism in the second half that struggles against a muted set and lighting that seems at war with Truscott and Cannon’s performances.
Four floodlights front stage are underused, while spotlights and yellow overheads too often wash out their facial expressions while failing to illuminate much of anything beyond the wrinkled white curtain behind them. Meanwhile, a wooden notice board sits blank and unused in the corner. The fourth wall break that comprises the show’s climax struggles to overcome the distance created by such technical elements.
Much of the gender politics at the heart of the piece seems of a particular moment in our understanding of patriarchal power structures. There is humour when Cannon is then berated for mispronouncing Judith Butler’s name ("I know who Jane Butler is!"), but the show has written itself into a corner at this point. Where its opening used surrealism to parody (and so attack) patriarchal values, the second half takes its points incredibly seriously, or appears to. In earnest, it considers Cannon’s misstep as evidence of a generalised problem.
While Cannon’s character criticises this – an aside that brings up class is quickly glossed over – it’s clear the show isn’t interested in humouring the kinds of complexities which his protest might raise. Do we still believe that one must ‘prove’ their allyship by being able to name particular theorists or books they’ve read? Or can we separate the question of money from the relationship between intersectionality and art-making?
For all its poignant observations, Masterclass does not engage enough with the paradoxes that surround its argument or the tensions that exist between the different styles of performance it uses. Though there are never any easy answers to the questions it raises, there are possibly better questions worth asking.