Review: COCK, COLAB Theatre

TIFT

Talk is Free Theatre’s revival of Mike Bartlett’s Cock is a masterclass of minimalist theatre that engages and challenges.

The plot of Mike Bartlett’s Cock revolves around John, who, having been in a gay relationship for some years, decides he needs time apart, during which he has an affair with a woman. Despite returning to his male partner, John loves both people and cannot decide who to settle down with.

With two leading gay characters, Bartlett most likely intended his play’s title to be taken somewhat literally, and in 2009, when Cock was first performed, the title did cause a certain amount of pearl clutching, with much of the media substituting  letters in the title with asterisks. 

In interview, Bartlett has indicated that another reason for that title was in reference to cockfights. The sense that these take place in liminal spaces where moral and legal codes are suspended would seem to have informed Bartlett’s instructions that the play be staged without  set, props, or mime. Even three of the characters are never named, only labelled as M, W, and F. 

This production by Canadian company Talk is Free Theatre (TIFT) leans into this minimalist, fight sensibility, presenting the action in a claustrophobic, windowless basement room at the COLAB Theatre, Southwark. 

The audience of only 34 seated around the walls of the room is right on top of the action, even closer for some when a company member momentarily sits next to them. For a production that is already pacy and taut, this intimacy ranks up the tension. 

The cockfight metaphor is further stressed at the start with John and boyfriend M facing up to each other for a fight, looking set to go into a gladiatorial battle. Once the action begins to unfold, however, it feels more like everyone in the room is at a group therapy session. 

As well as the laughs (and this is a very funny play), the gasps, occasional words, and conspiratorial catching the eye of another audience member all bear witness to the skill of the actors and Dylan Trowbridge’s direction in convincingly immersing everyone into Bartlett’s world. No one could have held their breath for the 90-minute run time, but there was a collective sense of being released when the doors to the room were re-opened. 

Such tension could not be maintained throughout without a strong company, and all four performances are terrific. 

Michael Torontow presents M as a man using brittle humour to cover up bristling anger, prowling around the small space, giving off a sense that at any moment he might take out his frustration with John on a hapless audience member. 

As F, M’s father, Kevin Bundy brings a different generation’s perspective, and while it is clear that he cares for his son and wants him and John to be together, he is also chilling as he sits, legs splayed, mansplaining that being gay is genetic, all the whilst eyeing up W. 

Tess Benger, however, more than holds her own as the only woman in this masculine arena. Just as determined as M to hold onto John, in turns fierce, gentle, and seductive, Benger’s W is more than a match for M.

John, much of the time, simply watches M, W, and F switch between telling him what he should do and telling him to make up his own mind. It would be easy for John to come across as selfish and manipulative, simply wanting to have his cake and eat it. Instead, Aidan deSalaiz presents a John who genuinely seems bewildered by his situation, unable to understand how he might be able to love two people at once and so incapable of deciding. 

Current discourses around gender identities and labels are more nuanced than simple binaries of gay or straight, and to that extent, the ostensible theme of Cock is a little  dated. But this production brings out deeper questions about anyone’s identities. Are we agents of our own desires or are we shaped by the expectations of our fathers and the men and women in our lives?

As W puts it, John is just a pencil sketch, waiting to be coloured in. Exactly who gets to do that colouring in is the question at the heart of Cock.

**** Four Stars

Reviewed by Mike Askew

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