Heterosexual

18 May 2010

I'm getting a certain amount of ribbing from my friends having been cast as Don Juan in a production of Patrick Marber's excellent Don Juan in Soho. I suppose I was hardly likely to get away with portraying a character who has had apparently had sex with about 20,000 women without a little comment. I keep having to point out that the original cast had Rhys Ifans in it, rather than Johnny Depp, and that therefore having the temerity to accept the casting did not mean I thought I was Adonis. Well, maybe Lord Adonis.

I was looking at reviews of the original production yesterday, and I spotted an odd reference:

"In a flash of sexual timidity, also, Grandage has removed Marber's apt allusion to DJ's gay proclivities, when no females came to hand."

Now, being familiar with the script by now, I know the line in question. "Skirt, and every once in a while, trouser. He's no poof, but he's got the appetite..."

I'd be interested to know who thought that was a problem. A man so sex obsessed that he will seduce a thousand-score women would probably fuck a cabbage patch doll if there was nothing else around, and in these days the "men who have sex with men" thing is practically old hat. The play is immoral, rude and largely played for laughs. I'm trying to work out if the director cut the reference because he wanted a purely heterosexual anti-hero, and if so why? Could it be that he wanted to stress that this particular kind of Lothario needed to be kept aside from the usual tabloid assumptions of homosexual promiscuity? i.e. to make him "a bit gay" would be to pander to the Daily Mail and make them think "well, what do you expect then?" But by doing so are you not accepting their view of the world? Hmmm.

I doubt I'll get a chance to ask.