Two Man Rumble

C02

3/5

For all the flowery effeteness of the Fringe, tough guys are everywhere. Fortunately, most are critiques, ironic or otherwise, of macho stereotyping. Take Alasdair Satchel's pithy anthropological dissection of male manners performed by himself and Michael Blyth with a physical brio and well-observed waggishness that, in terms of understanding its subject, has put the hours in.

Satchell morphs into Warren, a non-alpha male. We are led through his life in a day by Blyth's David Attenboroughish lecturer. As Warren takes a trip to his natural habitat, the pub, a human zoo of ageing studs, drunks, geezers and predatory girlfriends is laid bare in worryingly familiar fashion. There's even a Trainspotting-style toilet sequence, set to The Marcia Blaine School For Girls' twinkly score.

This appealing little show is a winner because of the pair's adeptness in slipping in and out of their sketchbook of archetypes that come complete with a pick'n'mix of physical tics. If you've never witnessed the sort of Saturday night that occurs here outside the kebab shop, you really need to get out more. Your round, I think.

Bang Bang You're Dead

C

3/5

More worrying aspects of the male psyche are explored with heroic intensity in Connecticut High School's Red Chair Players' follow-up to their hit, The Laramie Project, which dramatised the lynching of a young boy. Here they plough a similar furrow, this time with William Mastrosimone's moving fictionalisation of how 15-year-old Josh one day guns to death his classmates in the school cafeteria.

Over a tightly-packed 45 minutes, Josh is cross-examined by the victims whose lives he took, as we see the events leading up the onslaught fuelled by a pent-up adolescent fury that finally explodes. We see, too, how a gun-toting culture can warp young minds with its promises of power. We're not, however, talking gangsta rap in the ghetto here, however, but a tale that takes place in a nice picket-fence neighbourhood.

It's a vividly realised piece of playground impressionism, performed with a freshness and a sincerity by a lively teenage ensemble under Linda Ames Key's tight direction. Coming from a country where gun law is actually encouraged by a president of limited intelligence, it's rewarding to find in the next generation some kind of questioning and hope for the future.

Loaded

3/5

Mass murder is the motivation, too, in Scott Capurro's play, which begins with the stand-up and raconteur declaring his unequivocal lust for serial killers Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer, as well as the perhaps-a-tad-too-close-for-

comfort Ian Huntley. In terms of hopeless devotion, however, Capurro has lost his heart to Eric Menendez, the younger of two Beverly Hills brothers convicted

of killing their parents.

Entering into a protracted correspondence, Capurro's obsession becomes a mirror of his own life as a motor-mouthed gay man with a few parental hang-ups of his own. He then dovetails his very private pleasures with the everyday humdrum of his own world: lunches with dead-eyed Simon, a man born without an adrenal gland.

This turns into a comic but ultimately tender insight into behaviour both sociopathic and psychopathic, delivered with all the queeny bitchiness Capurro can front. Imagine Sex And The City penned by Dennis Cooper and delivered by Spalding Gray, and you'll come close, even if you know Capurro's dirty mind has imagined a whole lot worse.

TODAY'S CHOICE

l tam o'shanter

Assembly Rooms, 6.15pm,

until August 30

The Arches' staging of the bard's most famous work gets back to its rough-and-ready bawdiness, with a brilliant cast of four trawling the darkness where warlocks, witches and sozzled bogeymen lurk. Scary.