Cock
Mike Bartlett
Tower Theatre
Star rating 3.5
Mike Bartlett’s 2009 play requires its audience to listen as the Latin derivation of the word implies (auditory, audiology, audio etc). There are no props or scenery. The entire piece is played on a small square platform with us listeners seated around it on all four sides. It consists of four people talking, shouting, whispering in different combinations so it’s all down to skilful acting and, directed by Nick Edwards, this quartet makes a pretty good fist of it.
John (Harry Apps) is gay and has been all his life – or is he? In a long term relationship with controlling M (Micky Gibbons) which is now showing cracks, he meets a woman W (Meher Baluch). He quite likes what he has and does with her but … Then M’s father, F (Dave Wainwright) turns up to shove in an unhelpful oar.
Apps is outstanding as John. He has a terrific way of speaking with every muscle in his body, including a face tremor when he’s especially distressed. This is a man who is torn, pulled in every direction who really doesn’t know who he is and Apps nails that perfectly. Also excellent is Meher Baluch, whose stage debut – astonishingly – this is. She finds a very charismatic, sexy stillness in articulate W. And the graphic sex scene they do together in blackout, so we – a true audience – simply hear them rather than seeing them, is unexpectedly effective theatre.
Mickey Gibbons probably has the most challenging role because his character is calm and collected and, in a sense, cold even when he’s hurt. His self control mirrors the control he tries to force on John. The verbal tussle between him and W is like a cock-fight which relates to the title. It also refers, obviously, to male anatomy and possibly at times the old expression for lying: cock and bull. The play often questions who is lying to whom. Gibbons gets it right most of the time although his gestures tend to be a bit hand-wavingly samey and at times I didn’t quite believe in him.
Dave Wainwright’s is really only a support role, appearing in the final quarter of the play but he’s convincing as the father who loves his son and is willing to stand up for him come what may.
There is a lot of humour in this play which often unpicks itself as it goes along. Someone will say something laden with subtext only for someone else to throw it back at them in unequivocally graphic English which can be very funny. There were, however, people in the audience I saw it with providing the over enthusiastic “supportive laughter” which often graces non-pro shows and can be irritating. Although obviously the company rightly wants people to enjoy it in their own way, at its heart this is a beautifully paced, serious play, not a comic romp, and should surely be recognised as such?
