Testosterone

Kit Redstone set out with Rhum and Clay Theatre Company to make a work about masculinity, a fearless piece using the protocols and tribalism of the male changing room. This it does with incisive charm and a huge amount of humour, the aggression tempered with the back-slapping vanity of it all and as an audience I doubt that any man felt comfortable in that audience, whether you where victim or oppressor in your own changing room history. It brought it all back to me and it stung.

But the piece is about far more than that, because Kit is a trans man and along the way this has become, unashamedly autobiographical, charting the story of a girl who does not believe she is female or feminine, an androgynous human seeking a more comfortable way of living. As such this could be an angry tale, so many are – but it’s far more and far better than that. Kit has taken his experiences and laid them bare – quite literally. And in sharing it this made it far easier for we, the audience, to really grasp the heart of what he and perhaps many others who are transitioning experience.

Using that changing room as an arena for Kit’s journey, and as an exposure of the frailty of the male pysche at its most ridiculous is quite simply brilliant. The company are brilliant too, using image stereotypes and musical cliches mixed with finely tuned physical theatre beautifully – they nail it!

I never ever want to go to a changing room again, but I could watch Testosterone over and over. It should be filmed in this stage format, not glamourised, and shown to teenagers and adults everywhere.

The Old Market

5 March

Andrew Kay

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