H to He (I’m turning Into a man) – Finborough Theatre, London

Writer: Claire Dowie

Director: Colin Watkeys

One of four productions in Claire Dowie’s short season reviving plays from her decades-long career, H to He (I’m turning into a man) was first performed in 2004. In this short piece, Dowie’s Helen wakes up to find that her body is undergoing a physical and mental metamorphosis, transforming from the woman she has always been into a male.

Dowie wears the influence of Kafka’s Metamorphosis lightly, yet blatantly, as she jokes about the appearance of her (now male) right hand versus the familiarity of her unchanged left. Kafka may not have made jokes about not knowing whether to stand up or sit down to pee, but the idea that Helen is undergoing a monumental physical change is sold well, preferring to frame the transformation through humour rather than any perception of body horror.

Dowie endows the new male side to Helen with a completely different take on the world, from new cravings for cigarettes to eyeing up her friends with a newly lascivious male gaze. The play may initially base its comedy on reductive views of gender norms, but it gradually emerges that this is part of Dowie’s thesis. Some of what Helen is going through is also the concept of ageing, the realisation that one day we look in the mirror and realise we are no longer the 20-year-old that we perceived ourselves to be for so long.

The shifts in Helen’s sex and the associated gender performance that comes with it are denoted through Dowie’s continued adjustments to her costume. Initially bounding on stage in a blonde wig, vinyl miniskirt and heels, such accoutrements are gradually shed along with the long fake nails on her (still female, for now) hand. In their place, Dowie slowly adapts to jeans, biker boots and a leather jacket.

And that helps illustrate Dowie’s wider point, that the outward expressions of gender we take for granted can be shed. We are forced into a world where women are pushed into beauty standards in order to be seen, or perceived, as “feminine”, acts which get harder and harder as bodies age and change.

While rejection of those norms is perceived and described as tending towards the masculine, or at least masc-presenting, it could also be described as honesty. “I am not a cockroach, I am a real man,” Helen concludes, the Kafka similarity continuing to the last. Maybe what she actually is, for the first time, is herself.

Continues in rep until 5 July 2025