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Cock

Cock

★★★

Ambassadors Theatre

Cock

Cock

Ambassadors Theatre

Reviewed – 15th March 2022

★★★

 

“There’s conspicuous talent on stage in this revival, and a lot of well crafted technique”

 

Cock by Mike Bartlett, and directed by Marianne Elliott, has just opened for a limited run at the Ambassadors Theatre. This is a revival of a successful production at the Royal Court in 2009. The subject matter of the play addresses the conflicts and confusion that can arise over sexual attraction. Cock begins benignly enough as a lovers’ sparring match between two gay men, but explodes into a cage match during a dinner party between a gay man, a straight woman, and the man who cannot decide between them. Add to the mix an overprotective father who has come to support team gay son, and this is not a polite West End theatre dinner party play, that’s for sure. There are no winners in this match. Cock is a lively, energetic script, but whether audiences will warm to the overly simplistic characterizations of human sexuality, remains to be seen.

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To be fair, the playwright is aware of this. As Mike Bartlett points out in the programme for this 2022 revival, we’ve come a long way in thinking about gender and sexuality since 2009. He’s up front about the way in which we think about such matters now. John Mercer, the production’s Gender and Sexuality consultant provides a helpful glossary of definitions in the programme. Does this let Cock off the hook? Not entirely. The character of John, and the only one, ironically, to have a recognizable name, is the young man who cannot decide whether he prefers to stay with his gay partner, or leave to make a life with the straight woman he is also in love with. In 2009, this may have seemed like an either/or choice. But in 2022, there are so many more choices available to these three. Contemporary audiences may ask themselves why the need for drama? There are any number of ways these three characters could negotiate the situation. They could even live together and raise a family.

There’s conspicuous talent on stage in this revival, and a lot of well crafted technique. Marianne Elliott’s deft and experienced direction shows in the confident way the actors seize the space, designed by Merle Hensel. It’s a space for fighting, but also for love making. There is stage magic on the floor, and eye catching neon lights that ascend and descend on trapezes. It’s all very good looking in an austere way. Unfortunately, the austerity extends to the chemistry on stage as well. The actors who play John, W and M are almost too charming and too good looking. It’s hard to believe that they’ll actually get down and dirty to fight for their man (or woman.) And while Bartlett’s choice of language may be explicit, the words are spoken by actors who are often widely distanced on the stage as they speak them, and fully clothed in nondescript attire. (Costume supervisor Helen Lovett Johnson.) For Bartlett’s cock fight idea to work in a completely satisfying way, one has to believe that it’s all going to end in blood. And in this fight, it is the woman, predictably, who exits first. Jade Anouka as W shows her power—and one can see why John (Jonathan Bailey) finds that feminine power irresistible. The ongoing joke about John finding her “mannish” is unfortunate, to say the least. Bailey does a decent job playing the vacillating John. It is Taron Egerton as M who has the most difficult role in a way—he’s got to be likeable enough so that we see the bond between him and John, but also menacing enough to be a real threat when John, he and W come together for the confrontation scene. Phil Daniels as the Father enters rather awkwardly for this showdown dinner party. It’s an overly small role and hardly gives Daniels the space to show what he can do. The acting in this production of Cock is on the cerebral side. But then the script also fails to connect in its dazzling word play. It deflects from the action—the agony of sexual betrayal; of making inauthentic choices; the heart wrenching consequences of having to deny who you really are.

This revival of Cock is a mixed bag. By all means go if you enjoy Mike Bartlett’s talent for dialogue on noticeable display. There’s a lot to appreciate in the experienced acting, directing and design. But this play lacks depth. That might be because it’s now showing its age, and the subject matter needs a fresh, more complex look at a very contemporary topic.

 

Reviewed by Dominica Plummer

Photography by Brinkhoff Moegenburg

Cock

Cock

Ambassadors Theatre until 4th June

 

Previously reviewed by Dominica this year:
The Forest | ★★★ | Hampstead Theatre | February 2022
When We Dead Awaken | ★★★★ | The Coronet Theatre | March 2022
Legacy | ★★★★★ | Menier Chocolate Factory | March 2022

 

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A Very Very Very Dark Matter – 4 Stars

A Very Very Very Dark Matter

A Very Very Very Dark Matter

Bridge Theatre

Reviewed – 29th October 2018

★★★★

“the joviality imbues a sense of giddy discomfort to the atmosphere as the script and the cast expertly squeeze every ounce of black humour out”

 


With his unique brand of dark humour and storytelling, Martin McDonagh has authored countless classics, from The Pillowman to Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Naturally, then, there’s a lot of excitement surrounding his latest play that dismantles the glorification of nineteenth-century writers like Hans Christian Anderson and Charles Dickens. Does it deliver? Very very very much.

The play centres around the notion that all of Anderson’s work was actually written by a Congolese pigmy named Marjory, who he keeps imprisoned in a pendulous box in his attic, and that he takes all the credit for her work (occasionally making edits, such as changing The Little Black Mermaid to just The Little Mermaid). It later transpires that Dickens is doing exactly the same thing with Marjory’s sister. This is of course an allusion to the cultural appropriation and colonialisation of BAME narratives, which McDonagh attempts to heighten by linking it with a time travel plot involving a massacre carried out by King Leopold II of Belgium. However, this never really seems to add anything of substance to the main themes of the play, and leaves you wondering exactly what its purpose was.

This is one of McDonagh’s most comically focussed works, with characters frequently playing directly to the audience and firing off joke after joke. Most land spectacularly, and the joviality imbues a sense of giddy discomfort to the atmosphere as the script and the cast expertly squeeze every ounce of black humour out. Jim Broadbent as Anderson is pitch-perfect, portraying him as lovable and somewhat bumbling, despite having committed the horrific act of enslaving Marjory – he’s the quintessential product of imperialism. Johnetta Eula’Mae Ackles makes her stage debut as Marjory and does a formidable job as the driven and unstoppable genius behind Anderson’s work, and Phil Daniels and Elizabeth Berrington are excellently paired as Charles and Catherine Dickens, whose hate-fuelled chemistry makes for some of the show’s most hilarious moments.

Anna Fleischle’s gothic design exacerbates the fairytale-esque quality of the story, with Anderson’s cavernous attic being adorned with marionettes that enhance the disturbing undertones of the subject matter. Matthew Dunster’s direction, too, strikes a just-right balance of not labouring the themes while also not downplaying the intellectual drive of the script. And A Very Very Very Dark Matter has intellectual drive in droves – it asks questions on celebrity, appropriation, oppression, colonialisation, imperialism, authorship, and the nature of stories and time itself. It spends so long asking questions, however, that it forgets to lay the foundation for the audience to find answers. This is a play that will subsequently gnaw away at your mind for a long time, as you ponder the reach of its implications. A Very Very Very Dark Matter takes you on a mesmeric journey, but never quite finds it destination.

 

Reviewed by Tom Francis

Photography by Manuel Harlan

 


A Very Very Very Dark Matter

Bridge Theatre until 6th January

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:
Julius Caesar | ★★★★★ | January 2018
Nightfall | ★★★ | May 2018
Allelujah! | ★★★★ | July 2018

 

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