“The concept is interesting. It’s compelling to see these female performers play male roles.”
Edit: We were informed by the venue that this was the company’s first performance in the venue and thus they’d been unaware of the effects on sightlines until performing – we wanted to include this for clarity due to our commentary on it.
I was seated on the left side of the theatre. At the centre, four women, dressed in black, were interpreting men. Also, a projector behind them, with pictures and subtitles translating what they’re saying because the show was entirely in Spanish.
And here’s one of the flaws of Stupid Hug: because of where I was seated, I couldn’t appreciate the slides displayed behind the women clearly. Luckily I’m fluent in Spanish, but that’s a hiccup for a show set in London, where not everyone can get on strategically placed seats to witness and, most importantly, understand the piece.
Because movement itself is not enough: language is a key element of this production. Not only because, this feels more like an exposé of Latinx masculinity in many shapes and sizes rather than a story, but because Argentinian folklore is fully present in the way the characters speak and interact with each other. Again, I was lucky to understand the context as I am a Latin American person, and a cisgender man, but I’m not sure if everyone can comprehend the intricacies of those constraints by watching the show on its own.
The concept is interesting. It’s compelling to see these female performers play male roles. There was thought behind Damián Le Moal and Emmanuel Burgueño script as a resistance piece. Because you have the “Barcelona friend”, “The dry”, “The best of us all” and “The one left behind”, who is mainly the narrator for most of the situations these other three other characters go through. The names and over-the-top acting from Celeste Aranegui, Agustina Modernel Barbat, Valeria Piscicelli and Sofía Urosevich are meant to be both a satirical look and a subversion of expectations regarding said roles. The “dry” is soft at times, for example. Or the “best” can be mean and harmful.
There are various topics examined accurately, such as homophobia, misogyny, virility and male friendships. The arguments run particularly well when described in poetic statements, such as “survival is not a victory” or “violence would have its own state of gluttony”, or with blunt ones, like “you have to confirm all the time that you have two balls”. The statements land, but the scenes that surround them not always.
Nothing against Damián’s direction, or the performances from the cast. The narrative is more to blame here. The characters can be so plain at times, because the topic overshadows narrative, and the play tries to do them both with mixed results.
Because when the lighting design and these small essays work, it really shines through. If only Stupid Hug focused more on making its show be less repetitive.
Summary sentence: Meditations on masculinity through female performers is a good idea, but not as engaging as it could’ve been.