Man to Man – Royal Court Theatre, London

Tilda Swinton, Bunny Christie and Stephen Unwin return to Manfred Karge’s Man to Man, almost 40 years after first making a splash with it.

Man to Man

The thing with theatre is, it’s live, right? You can see a filmed version of it, but it’s not quite the same. Otherwise, you either see it or you miss it. Now I was not really in a position* to be going to the Edinburgh Fringe back in 1987 to see Manfred Karge’s Man to Man, directed by Stephen Unwin, with design by Bunny Christie, and starring Tilda Swinton. Nor when it transferred to the Royal Court shortly afterwards. And yet, I had the opportunity recently to see Manfred Karge’s Man to Man, directed by Stephen Unwin, with design by Bunny Christie, and starring Tilda Swinton. Unwin has revised Anthony Vivis’s translation for this new production.

There’s something Benjaminian about this – a copy of the original can never be the original. Not that this production tries to be, really. In fact, Karge has continued to add scenes to the play. One after the fall of the Berlin Wall. And another, more recent one, that looks at the recent rise of fascism in Germany and elsewhere. So this is a different incarnation of the play, really. With more hindsight through which to understand how the social and political context the play describes would continue to develop.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s go back to basics for a second. Man to Man is a 90 minute monologue, performed here by Tilda Swinton. In it she plays Ella Gericke who, facing ruin after her husband’s early death, takes on his identity in order to take his job. Perhaps also some of his male privilege? Or maybe to explore something deeper? Either way, over the years, as she moves between identities and genders as the situation dictates, Ella/Max never seems to get ahead. Life is difficult. By the time we meet her she is a sorry figure, in a mesh vest and Y-fronts, surrounded by appliances as worn out as she is. As in the earlier production, Swinton is covered in peeling paint to really drive the point home.

*Mainly because I was a child.

Oh, To Have Balls Kicked At Me By Tilda Swinton!

I didn’t know the work before I came to see it. Seeing it at all was a bit of good fortune, as an aside. I missed initial ticket sales, but a friend was lucky in the lottery. I was then lucky enough to be able to join her. This also meant front row seats – getting plastic balls kicked at me by Tilda Swinton was a new theatre-going experience but overall rather an enjoyable and memorable one!

Anyway, I’m getting distracted again. I didn’t know the work before I came to see it. But I found it to be remarkably rich, a sort of chaotic, confused and jumbled insight into the German psyche in the 20th century, gender identity, the lengths one will go to for self-preservation, how politics shapes lives and lives shape politics. In short, you could write a number of essays about it. Swinton utterly immerses herself in the role, giving Ella/Max a thick Cockney accent and playing her seemingly without restraint. Or, importantly, any ego. A vainer actor, wanting to look good on stage, wouldn’t be able to pull off the role. The result, at least from my front row seat, was a virtuoso performance, “f*cking brilliant” as one of my neighbours called out to Swinton during the curtain call, earning a thank you and a wink.

I’m not going to write an essay about the play. Suffice it to say that it should be a hot ticket not just for Swinton’s star power, or the novelty of a production revived. As history threatens to repeat itself, this repeated production continues to have relevance in what it tells us about individual choice and struggle in the face of greater forces. I didn’t quite understand all of it (the symbolism of the red tape diving the stage as the division of East/West Berlin, for instance – front row was perhaps a bit close to get a good look at Christie’s set). I got lost in some of the switching between prose and verse.

But that was all for the good – this is a play that should jolt you out of your everyday, comfortable thinking. Those who can get their hands on tickets to it in Edinburgh, Berlin or New York, should.

Salterton Arts Review’s rating: 5/5

Man to Man has now finished at the Royal Court. It now travels to Edinburgh, Berlin and finally Nee York.