Beautiful Man is a raunchy gabfest

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Erin Shield’s Beautiful Man is a ferocious indictment of how women have traditionally been portrayed and treated in film, television, theatre, and even puppet plays.

First produced in Toronto in 2019, Beautiful Man drives home its points, and generates its laughs, by inverting gender roles in film. Three women discuss a new cop movie they’ve just seen, in which a tough, hard-drinking, troubled female cop is tracking a serial killer who targets beautiful young men. She has a sexy, dutiful, loving partner at home whose sole function is to support her, try to understand her, and ease her pain. The man has a noble job saving the lives of sick children, but doesn’t have a name or personality. It’s an all too familiar setup, and one, when it unfolds in the play, draws a great deal of laughter in recognition.

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Shields goes a powerful step further. As is so often the case in these films, the cop discovers the mutilated bodies of the killer’s victims, and the camera lingers on them in what amounts to torture pornography. It objectifies the victim to the extreme.

The three women, played by Meg Farhall, Linda Kee and Katelyn Morishita, discuss the plot of this film, relishing the detail. There is so much anger in Shields’ writing, but, wisely, it is not funneled into the performances. There is a kind of excited elation in the storytelling, which is usually the case when someone tries to explain, in detail, their newest favourite movie.

Director Clare Preuss has allowed the three actors to roam the stage with as much enthusiasm as they bring to their storytelling, keeping the play from being static, and Farhall, Kee and Morishita seem tireless. They even climb on benches and stools, trying to evoke the same kind of excitement they felt watching the movie.

Joel David Taylor plays the beautiful man in all the stories the women discuss in the first hour of the play, and there are several more.

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Instead of communicating with her beautiful man, the cop watches a fantasy TV show about a female warrior queen who has numerous male slaves and concubines. These male characters are no more than set decoration for the film and are completely interchangeable. Going deeper into the movie within a movie is a play about Ancient Rome in which the corrupt, powerful politicians are women, and the men exist solely for sex sequences. Finally, there is a puppet show that is super violent in the way the woman treats her beautiful man.

There is no denying some of the dialogue is crude, lewd, and even vulgar, but, surprisingly, it’s not offensive, because it is obvious this is satire, and Shields does not shy away from hammering home observations women have been making about their representation in film for years.

The storytelling abruptly stops, allowing Taylor to exit his special space in the theatre to speak for beautiful women, in particular, and womanhood in general.

To his credit, and probably his director’s, Taylor doesn’t attempt any femininity in his gestures, posture, walk or speech. This is a man speaking the truth for women. The speech shows how women are held to different standards in the workplace, and how just using a darker shade of lipstick can be mistaken for a different intention. The speech ends with the woman walking to her apartment through a small group of men. KP Smith’s sound design helps Taylor put the audience in this woman’s unfortunate choice of high heels that night. It’s a long speech, that borders on tedium except for Taylor’s excellent delivery.

Beautiful Man, a co-production of Handsome Alice, Verb, and Downstage theatres runs in the Arts Commons intimate Motel Theatre until March 10. It’s intended to be shocking and unsettling, but it is also meant to be entertaining and enlightening, and it is that for certain.

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