Mike Bartlett is a Premier League playwright, equally at home on stage with the award-winning comedy King Charles III to his tv hits Dr Foster and Press.
AND in this revival of his play COCK, he doesn’t disappoint. It’s a love triangle with very sharp edges and a twist and a half. John has been with his boyfriend for 7 years but as the play opens, he considers it to be over between them. So he leaves.
Only to return in split seconds in imaginary stage time with shattering news – he’s met a girl and slept with her.
And in the next 90 minutes we go back and forth in time to explore in a very funny vein the tangled relationships that John has imposed upon himself.
Bartlett imposes strict limits on his cast. No scenery, no props, no sitting down, no miming of activities – all within a floor space with a red-painted hexagon upon its surface.
The 4 actors growl and prowl around its edges – like boxers squaring each other up. Indeed Bartlett says the inspiration for the play’s format came after watching cock fights and a bull-fight.
Luke Thallon plays John as a lovely likeable but totally spineless guy who can’t decide who he is or what he wants. Matthew Needham as the frustrated and beleaguered boyfriend plays the manipulative bully with great energy and bitchiness, which is terrific to watch and identify with.
The bf is intent on keeping hold of his partner by belittling him. It’s a tactic that collapses when Isabella Laughland comes on the scene. She is gentle, feral, but in the end equally manipulative, adding to John’s dilemma.
So Hamlet-like, John decides not to decide between their competing demands on him. Simon Chandler suddenly appears as the boyfriend’s father – a kind of deus ex machina, come to sort it all out and ultimately failing.
It’s telling that this human cockfight has a boxing ring style bell to separate its lightning fast scenes. And it’s also telling that John is the only character named – the others are just called M, F and W.
Do the other 3 characters actually exist ? Could they just be manifestations of different parts of John’s character or figments of his imagination ?
Bartlett doesn’t let us know. Throughout the acting is high-octane, energetic, fresh, adult and the words ring clear and true. We believe every word the people say, while knowing much of it is probably is not what it seems.
If it’s confusing in its message about identity, gender and labelling, this play about the games people play truly holds the mirror up to nature. It gets 5 stars for all that.
Cock runs at the Minerva Theatre, Chichester until, October 27.
Reviewed by Brian Butler
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