Theatre Projects' Beautiful Man looks at ugly pop-culture gender politics

There's the old saying that two wrongs don't make a right. But if that second wrong makes us look at the first in a new light, does it perhaps havevalue nonetheless?

That's where Beautiful Man, a 2015 play by Governor General's Award winner Erin Shields, comes in. Shields has said the play was written as a response to the relentless violence toward, and objectification of, women in TV shows and movies from the parade of sexual assault victims in police procedurals to the wall-to-wall female nudity of Game of Thrones.

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So here, three women (played by locals Sarah Constible, Andrea del Campo and Tracy Penner) describe the plot of a clichd cop show with one twist the grizzled police veteran is a woman who's chasing down a sociopathic female serial killer who rapes and murders beautiful men. And waiting at home is the sensitive-but-clueless lover, who is yet another beautiful man (with all of these men being portrayed by David Arial, perched up on a platform where he can be properly objectified above our central female characters).

As they describe the cop show, they begin describing a show the female cop watches within the show and another show within that, and so on, until we have a sort of Russian doll of narratives, all depicting gradually increasing levels of horrifying violence toward men. It's all the more horrifying for the fact we recognize it,because it's the kind of violence millions and millions of us (including me, if I'm being honest) gleefully consume on a weekly basis.

As they watch, the women make excuses for the depravity they watch (often funny, like pointing out the "historical accuracy" of a show about dragons and ogres), sometimes rationalizations ("she's such a great director")and sometimes disturbing (a male character's beauty is described as something that "makes you want to slap him").

The point here, of course, is to hold a mirror up to us as consumers of pop culture and if we're more disturbed by the mirror image than the original, to force us to ask why.

They're fascinating questions and it's a fascinating concept insofar as it goes. And there is the one problem I had withBeautiful Man though its aim is worthy, and Shields' writing is pointed and funny and disturbing by turns, it feels like it never quite enters a second gear. Even before the end of the play's short 70-minute running time, Shields' point is well made, and then made again.

And the points Shields makes, too, won't come as a surprise to many. It is true we live in an age where misogyny and sexism in popular culture are commonplace. We also live in an age when pop culture is dissected minutely in real time and beyond, and many of us are pretty decently versed in the criticisms of the pop culture we consume.

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That said, it's delivered in a package that engages. Ardith Boxall's Theatre Projects Manitoba production is finely tuned, finding laughs in the right spots, becoming appropriately unsettling where it should (the latter thanks also to some particularly effective sound and music design by Davis Plett). All three women in her cast turn in sharp and smart performances. And Arial, in a mostly silent role, evokes pity for the Beautiful Man.

Beautiful Man may not be groundbreaking. To any but the most passive of viewers, the arguments it offers will be familiar. But the fact the points it raises still need to be made and the questions it asks remain largely unanswered speak to its necessity.

TheatreProjects Manitoba's production of Beautiful Man runs at the Rachel Browne Theatre until Nov. 27.