In Muscle, five men, ranging from young to old, explore and play a variety of male characters that challenge what it is it to be a man. The piece excellently blends the mediums of dance, theatre and music to question the different avenues a man can choose, or be thrust into, and the consequences that arise.Shock N Awe use a number of semi-translucent white screens, in the shape of door frames, that are wheeled round the space, piecing together the setting that any one of the verbatim stories desires. Within these surroundings, the five men divulge and relive memorable moments from a man’s life: the responsibility of adulthood within a childhood, having a baby for the first time or protecting their family within a revolution. The monologues are seamlessly entwined with physical theatre that works to present these very different cases of masculinity with a sharpness and a raw manner.Muscle thrusts a lot of aggression and masculinity around the space and this beautifully contrasts with sections of delicacy that address the story of a boy with a muscle deterioration disease. The ensemble works well together, appearing as a family rather than a team, and the poignant choreography achieves a subtlety that emerges from this compelling piece. The projections onto the screens are a good use of multimedia but could work better if they were intricately running through the stories with more detail and frequency. I wanted to see more inventive and interactive work between performer and digital projection as there were lovely moments when the screens transformed the spaces and raced the audience to a completely different situation.A powerful production to explore the difficult and beneficial features of a man’s life, Muscle achieves both elegance and dominance in its approach to the male that affects us all.
