Man to Man at the Royal Court Theatre

“The cruises in Hitler’s time were really something.” So begins Tilda Swinton, intermittently accompanied by trilling static but otherwise left to carry the following 85 minutes alone and in silence, with only a handful of assorted props to assist her. The play – a revival of director Stephen Unwin, designer Bunny Christie and translator Anthony Vivis’s production of Manfred Karge’s one-woman show – launches on a note of deliberate discomfort, and scarcely lets up from there. Soon, Swinton is pungently recalling a brief but stormy relationship with the husband who’d soon die. The only things he left behind were the Snow White moniker he affectionately bestowed (this itself lays the groundwork for a queasily grim punchline) and his name, which she is quick to assume in hope of improving her prospects. At first, Swinton’s protagonist (Ella in her previous life, now Max in this new one) cites a determinedly apolitical viewpoint, one that subscribes only to “beer and schnapps and bugger all the rest!” Still, she knows that Hitler coming into power will result in an inconvenient military conscription she does not want.

There is certainly potential for a kind of bleak farce in Man to Man. Swinton is already eerily clownish in appearance: gaunt and red-eyed with sleeplessness, with dried paint caking half her face and her hair standing firmly to attention as if a cartoon electric shock’s been run through her. Still, Karge and co can wisely muster only the harshest moments of blacker-than-black humour, the kind so far removed from where any light shines that they scarcely draw laughs at all. The grim picaresque that takes Ella/Max to not quite the front lines, then all the way to America and all the way back is unfurled with the most absolute patience, and the lone performer recounting it firmly holds the line throughout.

Swinton acknowledges the crowd on occasion, but mostly gives the impression that Ella/Max would keep their monologue going with or without an audience; like those in attendance at the Royal Court have stumbled upon her in her personal purgatory instead of expressly seeking her out. Wherever Ella/Max have made it to now, it seems the only way forward is the Sisyphean task of recounting and reliving the same story over and over (this is no doubt a projection of the imagination, but one that nonetheless proves fitting. Swinton last played this role in this same production in 1988, after all. At 65 she’s doing it again, the story unchanged but it’s telling charged with even deeper soul-sickness than before, the despair of bad times that remain unchanging). Since the teller knows her story so well, she takes her time, and Swinton slows the audience to her stop-start rhythm with as much seemingly effortless stage command as one would expect. The performance is virtuosic, and also a little exhausting. Ella/Max retains the same note of knowingly irreverent, hollow-eyed mania throughout, occasionally pulling back for some respite but always sure to throw herself right back into it again. The effect can, over time, be as enervating as it is chilling.

Still, when Swinton ends the show seizing the microphone that is her primary scene partner throughout, echoing the ravenous, hateful cries of a resurgent German far right for the restoration of the Reich “NOW! NOW! NOW!”, it’s hard not to walk away affected. Man to Man can’t help but haunt its audience, even if 85 minutes gazing at the abyss can still leave one fatigued by the monotony of the view.

Ultimately, this is an accomplished, haunting revival, driven by its star turn but not permitting it to distract from the core message. The dark times once seemingly passed are showing themselves again, and many seem to run to them with arms outstretched.

Thomas Messner
Photos: Ruediger Glatz

Man to Man is at the Royal Court Theatre from 17^th September until 24^th October 2025. For further information or to book, visit the theatre’s website here.