FIVE PROPERTIES OF CHAINMALE
FIVE PROPERTIES OF CHAINMALE, Arts Radar in association with Catnip Productions and Hope Productions with Griffin Independent at the SBW Stables Theatre, 15 April-9 May 2015. Photography by Simon Cardwell: above Jeremy Waters, Briony Williams and Dominic McDonald; right: Alan Lovell, Jeremy Waters and Dominic McDonald.
The website description of Nicholas Hope’s new play is both useful and not. On the one hand, it apparently tells you what to expect –
“Five men. Five worlds. In a seedy London hotel room, a trendy gallery in Oslo, the cafés of Adelaide, the streets of coastal Sydney and the waiting room of a criminal court, modern man grapples with his crumbling reflection. Five Properties of Chainmale presents five variations on the theme of contemporary masculinity with not a bromance in sight. It is an excavation of the male mind across generations and time zones.”
And on the other hand, it doesn’t. Having experienced the 70+ minutes allegedly described above, one might be even more baffled than if you’d not read the precis. Or not, or maybe, or something. Who knows.
In the greater scheme of things and in the context of the play it doesn’t matter where the action takes place, because what happens to the men and what they do could be anywhere or nowhere or somewhere else entirely. (And on opening night some who hadn’t read the description thought the five were one man seen from different angles and in the end that didn’t seem to matter anyway either.)
And if textual confusion isn’t enough, the complex “trendy” artwork set (Tom Rivard and Tom Bannerman) neither enlightens nor adds to any understanding of place. But it does require the cast to service its ambulatory needs in a tiresome designer version of “look at moi, look at moi, look at moi ”. Well no, get over yourself, set, it’s not about you. Especially not when the script can’t stand up to your bullying.
Also tiresome is the final bit of blurb – “confronting, uncomfortable and comical” – which leads one to certain expectations, each of which remains unfulfilled. This is particularly unfortunate as it’s high time for, “five variations on the theme of contemporary masculinity with not a bromance in sight. It is an excavation of the male mind across generations and time zones.”
This is a time in contemporary masculinity when the feminist organisation Destroy the Joint has taken to recording the number of women murdered in situations of domestic violence. (An appalling 31 this year as of today’s date (April 18) and 84 in 2014) in a desperate attempt to get the government and society at large to take seriously the total stuff-up that is “contemporary masculinity”.
To treat the subject like this is “confronting” and “uncomfortable” because it is not only fatuous but also breathtakingly irresponsible. To even mention the jocular “bromance” in this context is to heedlessly heap even more scorn on the dead and terrified whose existence is so cavalierly disregarded in this pompous treatment.
The opening scene is a tongue-in-cheek depiction of modern sex and sexuality with Briony Williams marching around the stage clad in Victoria’s Secret-style black while fixing the audience with a challenging glower. Lest one be titillated by her fetishistic appearance, be sure that the irony is heaped on with a shovel and it’s actually all about the inability of one of the five men to get it up.
But – big “but” coming up here – in these times of out-of-control abuse of women, of “I will not be lectured on sexism and misogyny by this man” and the rampant disdain of male institutions and power bases for 51% of the population, be sure that “contemporary masculinity” is the problem. And there is a yawning abyss in popular culture and theatre where a mature and thoughtful examination of it should be.
Five Properties of Chainmale is not such an examination although one might think it had ambitions to be so given the quotes above. And because of the author’s previous philosophical and intelligent ruminations on contemporary popular culture. The play might have been improved, clarified, focused, whatever, if the vexed and most often disastrous combination of director and playwright had been avoided, but who knows.
Of the cast of four it’s only Briony Williams who manages to rise above the confusion and give anything approaching an entertaining and meaningful performance. As the various aspects of contemporary masculinity, Alan Lovell, Dominic McDonald and Jeremy Waters don’t stand a chance.
If this play and production have redeeming qualities, they were not apparent on opening night. And now, 24 hours later, bewilderment has been replaced by anger and disappointment at the vacuous and patronising pretension that lies at the heart of this distasteful tosh.
