The female cast are invited to identify primarily as real-life (middle-class) victims, while the male cast are invited to confess misogyny.
Women's potential misogyny is ignored, and some underlying assumptions of rape culture - that men are naturally sexually assertive and women are not, for example - arguably go unchallenged.
The performances are high energy and excellent (Arlo Green spitting as Clean is the standout) and the work's structure is satisfying - difficult to pull off in a meta-work.
Wonderful moments include verbal replays and the interleaving of McGee's script and current scenarios, which nicely illuminates stubborn issues. Foreskin's own words are quoted back at him: what was he saying about his "blondes"?
He mixes metaphors to explain: "I slipped back into the language like a jigsaw."
It makes sense: our received patterns of thinking, our jigsaws of inherited culture, are the problem.
Ambitious, interesting and well-delivered, Boys examines several patriarchal jigsaw pieces - just don't take these pieces for the whole puzzle.
Theatre review
What: Boys
When: Ends today
Where: ASB Waterfront Theatre
