Caleb Lewis is an emerging playwright making his mark. His past works have suggested he is an original writer with immediate appeal and it is no different with Men, Love and Monkeyboy. Lewis has a terrific ear for dialogue and he strikes the right chord here with an often hilarious social satire about the lives and loves of the whitebread Australian male.
At the centre of the play we find Phillip (Bryce Youngman), a primatologist, who at 28 is going through what could only be described as a better-late-than-never coming of age. However he finds himself surrounded by men who still think they are in their last summer of high school and Phillip doesn’t relate to them anymore. Worse still one of these men also happens to be his dad, Robbo (a spot-on performance from John McNeill) who is always attempting to peddle brown paper bag porn his way. The reason for this seems to be that Robbo is anxious that his quietly spoken son could be gay and thinks glossy mags full of big knockers might cure him. Actually the father and son scenes are very sharply written and contain some truly funny moments. These scenes went over particularly well with the audience as did most of the scenes between the blokes which also involve Phillip’s school friend Rex (Laurence Breuls) and his brother-in-law Dave (Andy Rodoreda).
Watching the play I felt Lewis has a lot of sympathy for women unluckily partnered with these types of males, men who grew up not knowing how to be men, but now he has to write them a bit better. Very little of the dialogue spoken by the female characters rang true and the play noticeably dragged in the male to female and female to female scenes. This is partly because in theses scenes Lewis’ formerly dry observation turns into soap opera.
Still Lewis plots deftly and the actors skillfully unfold the story with a lot less ego than you often see treading the boards in this town and their performances are less predictable as a result. Director Christopher Hurrell wants everyone to have a good time and he stages the primate scenes particularly well with invaluable assistance from choreographer Velalien.
Lewis has some interesting things to say about his own sex but this is no ride into the dark side of mateship. This is ultimately good entertainment.
Darlinghurst Theatre
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