Franklyn McCabe on Ten Men
I’ve seen Matt playing John Bindon a fair few times over the last four or five years; it’s become a sort of touchstone in my life whenever the production pops up again.
Writers tend to mentally ‘abandon’ a lot of what they’ve written, as the years pass; most plays belong to a particular time and place in their minds, and are consigned to history quite quickly. But this piece is, for me, still ‘present’, largely down to Matt’s enthusiasm in keeping the play and the character alive.
There’s a difficult sleight-of-hand when playing complicated men like Bindon, which Matt has a firm handle on – the balance between menace and charm. It’s harder to do than it sounds, because it’s not a binary switch. It’s never fully one thing or the other. It’s that indefinable quality in some people that allows appalling acts to be written off as nothing more sinister than the behaviour of a lovable rogue. Look at Bindon’s nickname, Biffo. Is it Biffo the cuddly teddy bear, or someone useful with his fists? Well actually, both.
In any first-class theatrical performance, the actor is more often than not playing one ‘thing’ very strongly while having the opposite ‘thing’ somehow appear in the room at the same time. As Bindon, Matt’s bonhomie is tinged with tangible sadness, his confidence with desperation, his brashness and aggression with sensitivity. When Bindon lies, we know what the truth is.
It is this gift, this sixth sense for the contradictions wrapped up in any one personality which makes Matt’s performance sing so clearly – he summons complex combinations of these things quite naturally and distils them into the extraordinary and complex human that Bindon undoubtedly was. We rejoice in Matt’s version of Bindon, and are repulsed by him in equal measure - as should absolutely be the case. We can’t look, and yet we can’t look away.
That’s a neat trick to pull off.
My hope when I wrote Ten Men was that it would leave audience members somewhat at odds with themselves – that they would spend an hour in the auditorium trying to reconcile their own moral absolutes with the sheer enjoyment of watching an expert transgressor in full flow.
I still, all these years on, get that sense from watching Matthew. Bravo!
With thanks to Franklyn McCabe, the writer of Ten Men for his ongoing support with this production.
September 2024
About Franklyn McCabe
A graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Franklyn has worked as a writer / director / creative in media, and theatre for almost thirty years. The Mullin books are his first novels. He was born in Manchester but now lives in Sussex (although he still dreams in Mancunian), where he is a cricket umpire and whippet walker.
Frank’s latest work is a series of novels set in his native Manchester https://shaunmullin.co.uk/
The Fight in The Dog & The Patron Saint of Nowhere – by Franklyn Blake
Available at www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0C6FJ3Q2L
