A knife playfully pressed against a penis might be one of the strongest symbols of contemporary masculinity to emerge from our theatres in recent years. It happens five minutes into Sam Grabiner’s 2024 play, Boys on the Verge of Tears, an unflinching deep dive into manhood and its formation, arrestingly staged by one of Melbourne’s best up-and-coming independent companies, The Maybe Pile.

Boys on the Verge of Tears. Photo © Ben Andrews

We’re in a public bathroom in fortyfivedownstairs: mould-green cubicle doors, graffitied tiles, a working trough centre stage, a dripping urinal in the corner (designed with remarkable attention to detail by Ben Andrews).

Grabiner isn’t the first British playwright to stage an investigation into gender in this setting. In recent years, an onslaught of toilet-chamber dramas has flooded the West End, transforming these spaces into political battlegrounds amid a nationwide anti-trans backlash. From the transphobic violence that haunts Travis Alabanza’s 2020 Overflow to the gender-neutral bathroom antics at the heart of 2023’s Public: The Musical, it is an easy theatrical shorthand to engage with discourse around gender identity.

But The Maybe Pile’s...