Male comics read female sexual fantasies

A raft of male comedians are to read the innermost sexual thoughts of an anonymous woman in a new theatre show.

Romesh Ranganathan, Nick Frost and Arthur Smith are among the rotating cast of Manwatching at the Royal Court Theatre.

The performers have not seen the script until they step on stage – while, similarly, audiences won’t know who is appearing each night until curtain-up.

Other comedians taking part are  Will Adamsdale, Rob Beckett, Danny Brown, Adam Buxton, Phill Jupitus, Miles Jupp, Funmbi Omotayo, John-Luke Roberts, Sunil Patel, Mark Thomas, Thom Tuck, Phil Wang and Liam Williams.

The Royal Court describes Manwatching – which was previously performed at the 2015 Edinburgh Fringe with the likes of Marcus Brigstocke, Nick Helm and James Acaster – as ‘a funny, frank, and occasionally explicit insight into heterosexual female desire, read out by a man’.

 The show begins with a male comedian being given a script they have never seen before. They read the script out loud, sight unseen, in front of an audience. This is a show about what one woman thinks about when she thinks about sex with men.

The anonymous female writer said: ‘I have been thinking about what it means to be objectified, and whether or not that is really tied to desire or power.

'Although men are objectified by other men, I was at a loss to think of many examples of men being objectified by women, and the examples I could think of were quite complicated – frequently involving the man’s profession rather than appearance (in Sex And The City, for example, men are usually referred to in shorthand by whatever job it is they do rather than how they look or act), or their dominance was the source of objectification. 

‘Even though many women desire men, the most basic elements of that desire seemed oddly unexplored. So I thought, who better to give the words of a woman desiring men to, than the voice of a man, as it’s so much more comfortable and familiar for us to hear about desire through the male perspective?’

Directed by Lucy Morrison, Manwatching runs at the Royal Court from May 10 to 20. 

A separate performance will take place at the MAC in Belfast on June 16,  performed by Tommy Tiernan. 

Further tour dates are to be announced.

Published: 5 May 2017