REVIEW: Men’s Business at Finborough Theatre 18 March – 12 April 2025

‘A daring production achieving things rarely attempted on the London stage.’

We open on flashing lights and blaring guitars, the female lead seizing a massive hind quarter of meat off the butcher’s rack set to the back of the stage before dumping it on a counter. Reaching back, she grabs a menacing cleaver, raising it high above her as the music crescendos and finally...brings it down lightly to skin off a few small bits of meat. The expected punch is pulled, and as with most of this show you’re never quite sure if it’s for want of trying.

The night is a series of these deflated, and some not so deflated, moments of tension, their constantly assured build-up a testament to the craft of director Ross Gaynor and designer Jess F. Kane. The 1972 German script by Franz Xaver Kroetz’s adapted here by Simon Stephens tells the blow-by-blow story of a dysfunctional relationship between lonely butcher Charlie (Lauren Farrell) and thuggish steel-worker Victor (Rex Ryan), as well as the dog (Cooper) that eventually causes a violent rift between them.

It’s a story that can be quite refreshingly anachronistic – Ryan adeptly portrays Victor a truly awful man in a way that much contemporary work shies away from. He’s vulgar and insecure, constantly brutalizing Charlie and enjoying the superiority it brings him despite his protests to the contrary. Opposite him Farrell’s Charlie is tragically pathetic, desperate for love from someone who has nothing but contempt for her. It’s a toxic relationship that plays out like a car crash, and one can’t help but rubberneck as the carnage unfolds.

And carnage it is; this production is dedicated to every excruciating beat of their mutual breakdown. Nudity is frequent but never erotic, simulated sex happens often yet looks more like torture than pleasure, and as for the dog, well, nothing innocent escapes punishment here. The show takes all this in its stride to build to a harrowing finish that seems like it can only end one way...then once more pulls its punch and concludes almost comedically.

Expect the unexpected with a show this provocative and arresting. A daring production achieving things rarely attempted on the London stage, see it so long as you aren’t too faint of heart.

Images by Wen Driftwood

MEN’S BUSINESS at The Finborough Theatre 18th March - 12th April 2025

BOX OFFICE https://finboroughtheatre.co.uk/production/mens-business/ 

MEN’S BUSINESS is Simon Stephens’ new version of Franz Xavier Kroetz rarely performed masterpiece Mannersache

Written by Franz Xaver Kroetz (translated by Simon Stephens and Bettina Auserwald)

Directed by Ross Gaynor

Designed by Andrew Clancy

Lighting Designed by Jess F. Kane

Box office: https://finboroughtheatre.co.uk/production/mens-business/

Produced by Glass Mask Theatre in association with Neil McPherson for the Finborough Theatre.

Reviewed by Harry Conway