Real Men (part of Now Festival)

"There were these two men in a pub assembling flatpack furniture and one turned to the other and said..." It sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, but this is exactly what was happening in Nottingham one rainy Wednesday night.

The top floor of the Rose of England pub was familiar to me as the backdrop of university organised discos and social events.  However this is the first time I'd ever been invited to an event where the main attraction was not drunken lecturers but chairs and tables. I arrived to find an equally curious audience waiting to see exactly what they'd spent their ticket money on.

The boxes of furniture took centre stage between two suited men. They explained that they were a group who saw their job as 'dispensing common sense' whilst also portraying in their work 'a perverse attraction to violence'. In deadpan fashion the 'Realmen' (as Allen Coombs and Iain Simons are collectively known) explained that the Flatpack construction of various items of cheap furniture was just the first stage in a bigger project. We also had the building of a trench, a fence, and a shed to look forward to in the future. There was uneasy laughter from the audience: were they serious or was this just a joke? No one seemed quite sure and the Realmen gave us little clue.

So then the furniture creation began. First the two tackled a 'Billy' bookcase, followed by a 'Norden' table, 'a set of 'Ivor' chairs and, for the grand finale, a 'Not' lamp. The lights went low. Bon Jovi's 'You give love a bad name' blasted through speakers. I suspected a university disco was about to happen after all.

Then the guys ripped through the cardboard boxes with alarming ferocity. A video behind them was displayed a close up of the instruction manual. It all felt like a surreal version of Fightclub, minus Brad Pitt and the witty dialogue. There was little more to do now than watch furniture being assembled. Attention lapsed and people began talking between themselves. Behind me a heated discussion was taking place about whether the construction of  'Billy' was going well (Boy #1 "The screws are the wrong way up". Boy #2 "As long as they get it up". Boy #1 "They're rushing it!"). In front of me a girl wearing green eyeshadow teased her boyfriend ("Are you jealous? Bet you wish you could do that." )

The flatpack furniture gradually became not so much a show but a backdrop to people drinking. Between the assembly of each piece of furniture, there were small stories about what it was to be a modern man living in the city. What was there for men to do now in a culture of microwave meals and feminism? This however was not an attempt to define all maleness, rather the unique experience of these two men. Because of this there are some intimate retelling of stories and homely anecdotes.  At one point a love poem was read after which followed a beautiful song by Aqualung and the building of the 'Norden table'. The poem was touchingly simple and, with the song, lulled the audience into quiet observation. It was one of the best moments of the night.

The second real highlight happened after all the furniture had been finished. An arm wrestling contest was to be set up between the artists and the audience and the winners took home the furniture. Violence saves the day! I didn't attempt the arm wrestling myself - weak wrists you see. Instead I went away with the sense that I had seen a show that, despite an interesting idea with much comic potential, and some good moments, didn't quite work.

If the artists had spoken whilst building the furniture then the audience would have felt more involved. As it was the silence necessitated that the audience talked about the piece and this in itself was interesting to listen to. Hopefully when 'Realmen' come to staging the next stage of their project, they will consider ways to keep the audiences attention throughout and not just in parts.

LeftLion spoke to Allen Coombs and Iain Simons afterwards to find out more....

LeftLion: Where did you get the idea for the work tonight?

RealMen: It's about our ongoing dialogue between ourselves and where we exist in relation to people we share our lives with. From my point of view my brother and father are manual laborers so I always compare myself to what they're doing because they're doing a well hard job and I?m not quite sure what essence I have given to that. We're really interested in awkwardness, particularly male - not things being bad, not things being good, not even average but ever so slightly wrong. That's what we aim to do tonight. A big thing for us is sincerity because we came out of irony and postmodernism so it's really difficult to be sincere. So in this performance we try to be sincere in the broadest possible terms.

LL: Have you looked at any other artists for inspiration?

RM: In performance terms people like Spalding Grey and Trevor Stuart but its more literature and film that inspires us.

LL: So if you were trying to explain what its like to be a man why not a more typical scene such as two men in a pub or at a football match? Why furniture?

RM: That's part of the ongoing process really because we were two blokes sitting in a pub talking about what might be interested in and what we might do. It could be us on the stage talking between ourselves but that's been done so many times and we wanted to be doing stuff rather than talking about doing stuff I guess. Which is why we took a lot of the talking out of it. We wanted to pick a random set of things such as furniture that you can't really control. We choose not to rehearse because then it wouldn't be as clumsy. Also we do have real jobs and as much as we love being on stage, we have other things to do in our lives.

LL: So what is your definition of a modern man?

RM: It wasn't an attempt to define everybody else but really our own experiences

LL: You began the show by explaining your background and your ongoing project of which 'Flatpack' is just a part. Because of the lighthearted way of the presentation, the audience didn't seem sure whether you were serious or it was just a joke. Is this a real project?

RM: They do exist and we will be doing them. In two months time we will be able to show people are work.

LL: Why arm-wrestling at the end of the piece?

RM: We wanted to give away the furniture we'd created and we thought the manliest way to do this would be an arm wrestling contest. Apart from arm wrestling I guess the manliest way would be to have a fight but we couldn't do that and besides we would really lose the fight!

www.realmen.co.uk

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