Chris Goode is no stranger to the Edinburgh Fringe and has picked up more than his share of Fringe First awards. He’s back at the Traverse with a moving monologue that connects and alienates in disturbingly equal measures.
Stepping up to the mike and held within the cold glare of a single spotlight, Goode intimately introduced us to various men in the city. Darting from one to another, he stepped inside their worlds and talked us through their day – it was a significant day for some, and just one more day to live through for others.
The similarities, behind all the closed doors, of these disparate lives, faked a hopeful connection between them and between them and us. Recognisable routines of early morning were described in beautifully-observed and frank detail: from the young lovers sleepily touching each other, through the ten year old touching himself, to the pensioner whose face is these days touched only by his dentist, who will then apologise for doing so.
As Goode moved us through the day, side by side with the characters he created, the familiarity of their thoughts and fears, echoed with our own. Damaged people and their damaged relationships blandly and bleakly displayed – a father trying to understand his son after he commits suicide; lonely widower talking through his confusion about the world with his dead wife’s doll – amid a relentless backdrop of this pointless, numb existence in which everyone struggles to connect, to understand and to feel.
Men in the Cities may have been merely an isolating theatrical experience, were it not for the clever weaving of fact into the acutely observed fiction. The murder of Lee Rigby, the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman and Goode’s own relationship with his father popped up at surprising moments as a stark reminder that this was in fact real life he was talking about; these points of fact connecting Goode’s fiction to our lived reality.
The content and style of Goode’s writing and delivery is full of impact and intrigue. Through the clarity of his depictions of the frustrations and confusions of our life today, he displays a beautifully balanced mind that in itself is a shard of hope. Worth seeing for that alone.
Runs until 24th August, various times (not Mondays), £8-£18.