Straight White Men

Straight White Men
By Young Jean Lee. La Boite Theatre Company/State Theatre Company of South Australia. Director: Nescha Jelk. Roundhouse Theatre, Kelvin Grove. 27 Jul – 13 Aug 2016

Recently widowed and retired engineer Ed (Roger Newcombe) invites his three sons, Jake (Chris Pitman) an asshole banker, Drew (Lucas Stibbard) a cynical author/teacher, and Matt (Hugh Parker) a disillusioned Harvard educated leftie to spend Christmas with him. All goes swimmingly as they revert to childhood games, joke crudely, and get drunk, but the high-jinks are sobered when over Chinese takeaway Matt suddenly bursts into tears.

The reasons form the crux of Young Jean Lee’s provocatively titled Straight White Men. Called one of the ten best plays of 2014 by the New York Times, Lee flaunts with ideas about what it means to be straight, white, and male but never follows through on them.

By focussing on a narrow group of college-educated upwardly-mobile males she conveniently overlooks the experiences of the middle-class and the poor who are also Straight White Men, not college-educated and bear no resemblance to those on stage.

What we are left with is a stylish production in which four fine actors physically play-the-fool, sing songs (their school musical spoof of Oklahoma! called Alabama in which they play the Klu Klux Klan is hilarious), play “Privilege” a repurposed Monopoly board game that swaps “Chance” cards for “Denial,” and dance to some loud music by Busty Beatz. These moments, and they make up a good deal of the play, are interspersed with Lee’s Stagehand-in-Charge (Merlynn Tong) who moves props around and breaks the fourth wall by talking to the audience, a conceit that seems out-of-synch with the rest of the play. Newcombe flexed his acting muscles in a part that was a perfect fit for him - a patriarch who was a loving dad and proud of his offspring. Stibbard’s youngest member of the family Drew was hyper-passionate about therapy (of which he was a disciple), maddeningly juvenile at times, but sensitive to the point of insensitivity to his eldest brother’s suffering. It was a nicely nuanced performance, as was Pitman’s Jake, whose douche-bag outbursts added streams of verbal colour to the scenario. Parker’s Matt was stoic in his refusal of help from his father, all-at-sea with his feelings of incompetence and retreat from academia, and fun to watch playing the domesticated elder son with awkward dance moves.

Victoria Lamb’s stark, beige set worked a treat, as did her colourful pyjama costumes. Lee is the much lauded Queen of experimental theatre in New York and this is her first foray into “reality” drama. Her premise excites but despite an exemplary cast and super direction by Nescha Jelk Straight White Men doesn’t live up to its hype.

Peter Pinne         

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