Dave Harris’ latest play flirts with deconstructing masculinity but only mentions a succession of topics without much comment or depth
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Through no fault of the cast – who very nearly perform their jockstraps off – Tender is a mess.
The problem with Soho Theatre’s latest show is that it tries to have it both ways and comes up short.
On the one hand, its production design, complete with consent paddles (“red means no and green means go”) and stickers over phone cameras, is intended to prime the audience for a raunchy male strip show – ironically the kind of depressing spectacle you might find for real just down the street.
On the other, it desperately wants to be a hard-hitting, subversive exploration of the dancers’ masculinity and vulnerability – the kind of thing critics might write the words “brave satire” about.
In the end, despite some solid direction and decent performances from the cast, it winds up being neither.
It flirts with a bunch of serious topics, but doesn’t have much to say about them. In no particular order, topics covered include penis size, sexuality, domestic violence, women’s desire, child estrangement, sex work, commitment, romantic dislocation, performative masculinity, consent and the potential for revenge porn.
Writer Dave Harris brushes up against these ideas in his script, but rarely dwells on them and offers little in the way of meaningful comment or conclusion. They just exist.
For want of a better word, what we’ll call “the story” has the following premise.
Dancing Bear porn – where actors pretend to be male strippers and have sex with other actors pretending to be their audience – is popular online.
Recognising this, former porn performer, Margie, has set up a New Jersey club with three blokes offering audiences the offline experience – strippers who actually have sex with them.
These are Trae, Donny and Geoff and they are the real Dancing Bears.
But, pretty quickly, their tawdry show is under threat from a bunch of guys with larger cocks and better choreography. How will they save their club?
Despite Trae – the more sensitive of the three – having already explained at some length that his life leaves him dead inside (despite and, perhaps because of, the endless sex and adulation), each member of the trio is plunged into a kind of crippling, existential anxiety.
One of them cries mid-performance and everything so – you know – it’s heartfelt.
An unlikely saviour appears in the form of the literally virginal B, dispatched by her estranged mother Margie to sort out the show.
We discover her special skill is that she’s able to orgasm at will simply by shutting her eyes and thinking about her special planet.
This talent, along with her lack of interest in sex, renders her immune to the dancers’ charms as proved in a lengthy session where they press themselves all over her. She laughs at them.
Perhaps Harris thinks this makes her the ideal interrogator of their masculinity, but it also makes her a dubious choice as a fixer for an ailing sex club.
Suffice to say her prescription – that the guys just need to focus on their own pleasure and come up with a new presentation – feels flimsy.
That their efforts are rewarded with her first eyes-open orgasm from the midst of the crowd is a risible conclusion to what is a pretty silly play.
There’s a degree of fun in the execution. The chaps – played by Darren Bennett, Kwami Odoom and Dex Lee – squeeze every inch of humour out of the gags.
The latter pairing also thrill with muscles popping as they twirl and flex on the poles and at the audience.
It’s fair to say director Matthew Xia has his cast make the most of the set and do what they can with the text.
Even Jessie Mei Li has her moments as brittle construct B, a part that must be tough to scrape empathy out of.
But in the end, the feel is a play built on an uncontrolled brainstorm – a list of ideas about men, women, desire, lust, vulnerability masculinity and life – that just hasn’t been refined.
There’s only so much that good acting can achieve if the source material is a flaccid mishmash of topics thrust into a neon posing pouch and jiggled about in a bid to entertain.
For a genuine happy ending, perhaps the Real Dancing Bears ought to be allowed to quietly go out of business.
2/5
**
key details: Tender
Tender runs at Soho Theatre until June 26, 2026. Tickets cost £15 and can be booked here
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