Review: Man Boobs (Pride Films and Plays)

Scotty Zacher | February 21, 2012 | 0 Comments

Man Boobs

Written by J. Julian Christopher
Directed by David Zak
at Mary’s Attic, 5400 N. Clark (map)
thru March 10 | tickets: $15   | more info

Check for half-price tickets


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The bed is a battlefield

Pride Films and Plays presents

Man Boobs

Review by Clint May

For anyone who’s ever felt less than confident in that most tender of human contacts (i.e. sex), this story will resonate. For the couple in Man Boobs, a thin piece of cotton might as well be the Great Wall of China, preventing intrusion into a vast country of insecurities. It’s a simple but honest look at self-acceptance in an airbrushed world. But it’s not just ourselves we have to accept. We have to let others accept us too. It is the latter struggle that can prove the most daunting, as two men trying to “get down” find out.

Marty and Spence (Michael Hampton and Rick Heintz) are on their fourth date. Marty is a self-assured and extremely randy truck driver who’s dated several muscle heads in his day. Spence is a humble thirty-something librarian with a rotund body form and a landmine field of issues behind his hunched exterior. Back at Spence’s studio apartment, they engage in a delicate dance of motives, with ribald Marty desperately trying to get reticent Spence into the sack and remove his shirt at long last. Their “dance” becomes increasingly awkward as their conflicting desires mount. Eventually, Spence is driven to reveal that the source of his insecurities are rooted in a past trauma concerning his eponymous “man boobs.”

The script by J. Julian Christopher rarely makes a false move. The interactions between Marty and Spence are unaffected and recognizable to anyone who’s wanted to have horizontal relations. Hampton and Heintz have a sweet chemistry, with Heintz in particular shining as a sweet guy who doesn’t know how to let anyone in. Like Neil LaButte’s Fat Pig (which also concerned an overweight librarian), there are no easy answers in Man Boobs. Self-acceptance and body image are thorny issues fraught with dangers for anyone who would attempt to be free of the anxieties of intimacy. It’s as blunt and brutal as its title would imply.

Clocking in at just over and hour in one act, Man Boobs doesn’t wear out its welcome, moving organically from awkward hilarity to desperate tragedy. It remains true to its core, with only a few moments of melodrama threatening the atmosphere, neatly sidestepping any “after school special” overtones. Anyone, gay or straight, who’s had something they are ashamed to expose to a cruel world will recognize themselves in this full-length mirror. Man Boobs is a parable for a perilous world, reminding us that vanity exists not just in the cocksure but the timid as well. Each one is a bit of a cheat to reality. As Marty observes, “What’s the point of having a full-length mirror if you’re only going to see what you want?” The sad reality is, people like Spence want to see their self-loathing—it’s as uncomfortably comfortable as an old cotton t-shirt. It’s a case of “better the devil you know,” even if the that devil isn’t just on your chest, but beats beneath it as well.

Rating: ★★★½

Man Boobs continues through March 11th at Mary’s Attic, 5400 N. Clark Street (map), with performances Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30pm (plus an additional performance on Thursday, March 8th at 7:30pm). Tickets are $15, and are available at the door or online at brownpapertickets.com (check for half-price tickets at Goldstar.com). More information at pridefilmsandplays.com. (Running time: 75-minutes with no intermission)