This is, it’s constantly said, a crunch time for men, with toxic masculinity and the male loneliness epidemic a massive cultural preoccupation. And the suicide rates for men that Marcus Brigstocke shares are undeniably grim. Yet they are also, sadly, not that surprising, given the way that we as a society have absorbed and normalised them.
The stand-up also has no difficulty naming and shaming specific powerful men – Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu, Elon Musk and Andrew Tate – whose words and actions have poisoned the world and wrought untold damage to humanity, their ego, selfishness and misogyny integral to the suffering that they’ve wreaked.
However, if the stakes are high, the Radio 4 veteran knows how to package his concerns in a thorough, enquiring but amusingly palatable package, touching on many of the fears that birthed Adolescence, yet prioritising sly gags rather than hand-wringing to make his points.
Stopping short of sympathy for the devil, the Gregg Wallace he encountered on Celebrity Masterchef is a pitiful buffoon rather than a calculating sexual predator. And while Brigstocke also indulges levity by colouring the account with his personal frustrations about the show, he damns the disgraced presenter with deft mockery rather than flagrant outrage.
With considerable skin in the game, Brigstocke needs to take a comprehensive, robust but rounded and sympathetic view of men. In his 50s, with a father in his 80s, an adult son in his 20s and a three-year-old, he feels eminently qualified to expound upon the subject, his centrist perspective affording him a magnanimous reasonableness, even if sometimes you just wish he’d dig a little deeper or strike a little harder.
He’s attuned to all the deflections and mis-directions that men use to avoid talking about their feelings, speaking practically about the rituals and nourishment of blokey friendship that can keep life happily ticking over.
He’s persuasive too on the task-orientated little quests and victories we require to keep us feeling valued, gently alluding to the strides made by feminism and sending up men’s frustrations when we’re robbed of even the tiniest bit of status or power. Inevitably, his family setup is the scene for multiple emasculations, with his toddler son’s renegade bowels robbing him of projecting the sexy, capable father vibes he thought he was.
Conscious of his class privilege perhaps, he’s wary of being too condemnatory of less reconstructed or insensitive men. His memories of the unlikely period he spent working on a North Sea oil rig is a portrait of two very different masculinities, struggling to fathom each other, yet rubbing along just fine once they’re allowed to be themselves.
In talking about neurodiversity, which he jokingly presents as symptomatic of masculinity to an extent, Brigstocke is sympathetic towards those that truly struggle to manage their condition. Yet this is a section largely devoted to considerable self-deprecation at his own expense, an endearing display of his obliviousness and wisdom after the fact, further softening some of the patrician, Radio 4 chattering class aura he might otherwise convey.
Elsewhere, the rather tricky subject of how men should behave walking home late at night around women, especially when they’re six foot plus, is not the most original subject matter for stand-up. But it’s got an edge. And his prostrating humiliation of himself, tying himself in knots to be empathetic and non-threatening, adroitly captures male internal panic while not undermining the dangers women face or making it all about him.
Toying with audience discomfort as he (tenderly) puts a couple of male friends in the crowd on the spot about their relationship, he’s shrewd in highlighting the ridiculousness of fear-influenced nostalgia for championing the attractiveness of men like Tate.
Never too deep or challenging, venturing nothing that might not be termed common sense, Vitruvian Mango is a modest, well-rounded and entertaining summary of the state of modern British manhood that’s full of affection for blokes and their bewilderment while gently encouraging them to get a grip.
Tours until 25 March 2026 | Image: Contributed
