Tron, Glasgow
There used to be an argument that a play couldn't be called feminist – even one with an all-female cast – if its characters' lives were defined by men. Gary Owen's three-hander from 2001 offers the opposite scenario. It is about three men in a Welsh town whose lives are defined by women.
It's a moot point whether this makes it a feminist play or not. The unseen women are variously manipulative, exploitative and unyielding. They call the shots, but they're hardly positive role models.
It is easier to argue that Crazy Gary's Mobile Disco is about masculinity in crisis. Built from three long monologues, it is a desolate vision of a twentysomething male community still abiding by the rules of the playground bully.
"Crazy" Gary is that bully, a territorial alpha male ready to fight to the death over work and women. Played by Colin Little, he is a nasty, friendless sociopath, his portrayal made palatable only by his chutzpah and self-belief. For all his bravado, it takes only the attention of an attractive woman at a party to turn him into a helpless child.
That same woman holds similar power over her boyfriend Russell Markham, one of Gary's schoolyard victims, whose plaintive cry of "I'm leaving" encapsulates the terrible hold of a small-town past. Powerfully performed by Kristian Phillips, it is this monologue that makes narrative sense of the other two, transforming an evening of mildly amusing storytelling into something sad and troubling.
Earlier, there was pathos in Martin McCormick's spirited performance as the mentally damaged Matthew D Melody, a would-be karaoke king and another of Gary's victims, who is in thrall to a woman interested only in his pills. In Leann O'Kasi's production, with its clever design by Neil Haynes, the three men are like caged animals, captive, neurotic and prone to lashing out.