Colchester Fringe Festival 2025
Men Don’t Blush
Jose Parra
Genre: Theatre
Venue: Headgate Theatre
Festival: Colchester Fringe Festival
Low Down
Gender stereotypes, recovery from surgery and everyday blushing explored n a fun yet moving way.
Review
One of the many aspects that Colchester Fringe is keeping alive is the art of clowning. It’s quite a specialized aspect of physical theatre and it is represented here at the fringe by a few productions, not least this charming piece by Jose Parra. In Men Don’t Blush, Ignacio, a man who’s never fitted into traditional gender roles, stares at a tomato—and suddenly, an ordinary afternoon cooking spirals into a surreal journey of identity and imagination.
It’s a simple but highly effective idea to use a tomato as a springboard to investigate how men hide their feelings behind a variety of facades. Ignacio is a vulnerable performer who has to do his show in front of Sara, the theatre manager, following some complaints. Even the radio seems to be rebelling against him! He steps into an alter ego of a confident author, whose bestseller The Power of Me, may just give him the confidence he needs. (Of course, that confident performativity hides an equally insecure man, the sounding of a fire alarm exposing the fake confidence every quickly). He adopts a spirit persona, a delightful costume, and tries to raise the confidence of everyone, it is a beautifully interactive show, gentle and non-intrusive.
The key to a show like this is the connection between performer and audience, and Parra is warm and welcoming from the outset. The social mistakes we have all made connect with the social excellence of his performance and we feel comfortable that the barriers are down. Gender stereotypes are lampooned, and an angelic version emerges out of a cocoon at the end, a better self. The costumes are excellent, really fitting into the concept of shedding skins, of forming a new identity. The pace of the piece is totally on point, the physicality and energy smoothly flowing from scene to scene, a joy to watch. But through it all is his journey back from testicular cancer, hence the blushing, but the wonderful, honest way of staging that makes this a very unique experience, especially when a tomato is nailed back together. It’s an art work of survival.
