Edinburgh Fringe: A roundup of shows about toxic men – Daughter, De Fuut, Unsung, Angry Alan, Square Go

Daughter (★★★★☆), De Fuut (★★☆☆☆), Unsung (★★★☆☆), Angry Alan (★★★★☆), Square Go (★★★★☆)

Seconds out: Gavin Jon Wright and Scott Fletcher in ‘Square Go’ (Mihaela Bodlovic)

Increasingly it feels as if I am being groomed. By men. In the wake of #MeToo and shifting perceptions about privilege and entitlement, they are oh-so-eager to tell me their side of the story. To invite me into their heads. To test whether and where I will draw the line.

Will I allow myself to be seduced by the protagonist of Daughter (Canada Hub, until 26 August) who presents himself as a loving father of a daughter but who treats women with disdain? Or will I take the hand of the self-justifying, self-confessed paedophile in De Fuut (Summerhall, until 26 August) who tells us of his fantasies and of his time as a scout leader which gave him easy access to young girls?

Can I be persuaded to feel sympathy for middle-aged Roger in Angry Alan (Underbelly, until 26 August) who has lost his job, his BMW, his first wife and his son and is disconcerted to discover that his girlfriend is taking a women’s studies course at the local community college?

Or feel something for the protagonist of Unsung (Summerhall, until 26 August) in which Valentijn Dhaenens plays a politician on the campaign trail attempting to win our votes even as his personal morality and public persona reveal him as a hollow man in a hollow world of politics? A world in which it is only image not policies that count?

These one-man shows are some of the most talked-about on the fringe. Daughter, in particular has elicited some strong responses, especially from women who have felt that listening to Adam Lazarus’s character try and make us complicit is not just distressing but also morally doubtful. Particularly in a world in which men still largely hold the power and take central stage.

Adam Lazarus in ‘Daughter’ (John Lauener)

But even as Lazarus’s character is trying to seduce us in Daughter by showing us how he dances with his daughter and what a new man he was during her difficult birth, he betrays himself. To be honest he always seems like a bit of a jerk which works against the dramaturgical set-up.

But the really fascinating thing here is the way the show probes how we, the audience, respond. He keeps pushing and pushing at the line as if daring us to draw it. When will that be? When he slams his daughter onto her bed in anger? Or later? Much, much later?

Daughter is so powerful and unsettling because it blurs the line between performer and character. De Fuut tries to do the same but less fruitfully because it is clear right from the start where the interests of the Lolita-admiring protagonist lie and the lengths to which he will use theatre (he is supposedly writing a play) to get us on side and accept that his sexual attraction to children is a beautiful thing.

At the performance I saw, the audience were not having any of it, and I wanted to cheer them. But I am not sure if that makes the show a success or a failure.

As he proved in Big Mouth, Valentijn Dhaenens is the most mesmerising of performers but Unsung is a slightly overfamiliar story of political ambition wrecked by sexual scandal. But is it the private pictures of private parts that make their way onto social media that are this politician’s undoing? Or his inability to connect with his own feelings and have any empathy for others?

Valentijn Dhaenens in ‘Unsung’ (Murdo Macleod)

Unsung suggests that we are all losers in a world where male politicians are driven primarily by competition, fear of failure and their sexual urges. But the structure of the show is clumsy, the points it makes too obvious, and the character’s coldness works against engagement.

Roger in Angry Alan is the man next door who we all know. He once thought he was a master of the universe or would at least have a job in middle management for his entire working life. But the world he was born into has changed, he’s lost the trappings that made him feel good about himself and he is bewildered and angry.

That makes him easy pickings for an online men’s group run by “Angry Alan” who argues that we are living in a “gynocentric society” and that what men like Roger need are more rights.

It’s not just actions but beliefs too that have consequences in Penelope Skinner’s sharply observed play which combines real online material with a powerful performance by Donald Sage Mackay as Roger.

The show needs more room to breathe than its hour duration allows, and it ends way too abruptly, but it is all too plausible in the way it shows how men who feel like failures can be seduced by others who are peddling their own agendas and self-interest.

Donald Sage Mackay in ‘Angry Alan’ (The Other Richard)

Where do these male feelings of inadequacy begin? Maybe right back in the playground. Gary McNair and Kieran Hurley suggest so in the riotously entertaining Square Go (Paines Plough Roundabout, until 26 August).

A “square go” is a Scottish term for an organised fight between two individuals, and 13-year-old Max (Scott Fletcher) has been called out for his first bout by the class bully, with only his friend Wee Stevie (Gavin Jon Wright) on hand to advise him. Will the quivering Max man up or run away?

Finn den Hertog’s production, which comes with original music courtesy of Frightened Rabbit, makes brilliant use of the circular space as a gladiatorial arena, and McNair and Hurley’s buoyant script pinpoints the confused mix of blustering swagger and sheer terror that these two teenagers feel as they mistakenly believe that to be a real man you have to prove yourself in a fight.

It is both sad and blissfully funny, good on what a father hands down to his son, and quietly indicates that there are ways that boys can become men without the need of throwing a single punch.