Man to Man

Alexandra Wood proves her writing skill once again in this splintered, elliptical adaptation of Manfred Karge’s play Jacke wie Hose. The rise of the Nazis in '30s Berlin forces Ella Gericke to become her recently deceased husband. She has to keep his job, his income, and her secret.

Margaret Ann Bain as Gericke wears high-waisted trousers and splays her feet outwards, as if a silent movie star – channelling Charlie Chaplin particularly. The set is a stunner: a grey bedsit, the walls covered with a gauze that lets the timber frame poke through; uncanny animations and shadows are projected onto the canvas, offering a strange blend of reality and fiction that suits the premise of the play.

Frequent nods to the Grimms’ Snow White are a reminder of the fairytale setup of the play: a woman pretending to be a man for her whole life. Man to Man has the same sense of brutality as those fairytales too, as the depressing realities of life mix with fantasy.

Co-directed by Frantic Assembly’s artistic director Scott Graham, the physical company’s prints are all over this production: Bain climbs into a suitcase and disappears, only to reappear at a door seconds later; she hangs from ceilings, sits on chairs suspended from the wall. It looks damn good, again reinforcing the fantasy element.

Bain puts in an excellent performance, and all the individual elements work well. But it’s a strangely cold piece that puts so much emphasis on visual trickery that its words, and consequently some of its meaning, get lost.