Champions review – intimate encounter is a voyage round the father
You do not get a sense of Constaninou's mother but his father's voice is key. He speaks of his 'disappointment' over his son's sexuality, of wanting him to be a real man and of his dismay when Constantinou, as a child, started to play with dolls.
The voices pour out of a TV set, radio and gramophone on stage: they serve as the equipment for this medium-like encounter, the words of the dead for ever living in the air and looping inside Constantinou's head. His recorded voice tells us anecdotally of other gay men he has asked about their difficult relationships with their fathers.
It is a deeply personal and experimental show, evolving slowly and going nowhere particularly. Constantinou includes recorded exchanges with a therapist, and there does seem to be an intimate, therapeutic element to it.
But there is beauty and artfulness too: the set is suffused in washes of colour. Giant screens feature a wrestling match between two men that leaves the the ring for ocean waves and meadows. They are arresting images, the bodies of the men filmed close up, the aggression in their fight slowly giving way to something more gentle, balletic and erotic.
There are moments in the father's homophobia that leave you breathless for this son. The ending speaks of acceptance and feels too tidy, but it does make the point that there is a choice to reject or accept on both sides – for son as well as father, even posthumously.
At Pentland theatre, Pleasance at EICC, Edinburgh, until 16 August
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