F: “John. Who are you?”
For an exciting night see Cock in Barrie. No, this is not some sort of illicit entertainment. Rather it is intentionally provocative title of a 2009 play by British playwright Mike Bartlett, who has written work as diverse as the television series “Doctor Foster” (2015 and 2017) and the blank verse play King Charles III (2014). In 2014, Studio 180 presented the Canadian premiere of Cock in Toronto. Now, Barrie’s always adventurous Talk Is Free Theatre presents its own production which is superior to the Toronto production in every way. The combination of insightful direction and intensely committed acting from the entire cast in an intimate setting create that thrill that theatre-lovers live for.
The plot summary I provided for Cock in 2014 is still valid: “John, the only named character, has been living with M for seven years. They have now reached the proverbial seven-year itch and have begun arguing most of the time. The older M makes the younger John, who began the relationship when he was 21, feel as if he will always be a child. Eventually, John has enough and walks out. In the two weeks he is gone, he begins talking to W, a 28-year-old divorcée, who shares the same way to work as he does. The talk rapidly turns to sex and, for both of them, love – they think. John, however, has never slept with a woman before, much less contemplated living his life with one, and, frightened, runs back to M. M decides, against all the evidence of disastrous dinner parties in drawing room comedies, that having W over for dinner will help John make a final decision about which of the two he wants. For backup M has even invited his own father F.
“This clearly a 21st-century comedy because John has come out at university where he was cheered on as ‘brave’ and fell in with a large community of friends. When he moves in with M, their relationship is welcomed by M’s parents because they are happy their son has finally found love. One aspect of the modernity of Bartlett’s play is that John’s one walk on the wild side should be with a woman. The only negative word ever used about gayness is that John feels W would offer him a more ‘normal’ life, with children, grandchildren, etc., a term that M immediately rejects”.
In 2014, I wrote, “Initially, our focus is on John’s inability to decide anything, let alone whether he is gay or straight. On one level Bartlett is satirizing the immobility of the younger generation who can’t decide anything because they know one decision will exclude other choices”. If I felt an element of satire in 2014, I see none there now in 2024.
The reason is that director Dylan Trowbridge has seen much more deeply into the play. He reveals Bartlett’s play not as a simple comedy but as a tragedy disguised as a comedy. On the surface the dialogue is very funny, with most of the humour generated by the characters’ habit of over-analyzing everything they say, even in the midst of saying it. What Trowbridge and his cast bring out so well is the atmosphere of menace roiling underneath the surface of the dialogue.
Trowbridge says that Bartlett was inspired to write the play during a stay in Mexico where cockfighting is still legal in certain states, though even then these events are held secretly. To create this atmosphere, Trowbridge and production designer Kathleen Black have created a site-specific production in the basement of an office complex in Barrie. The audience meets inside the Barrie By The Bay Commercial Complex at 80 Bradford Street, and then is led outside to a grafittied roll-up garage door. The action is played in alley staging in a long, narrow space with most walls of raw concrete with one of plywood and chickenwire. The site reinforces the notion that we are joining in the clandestine activity of watching creatures urged to fight each other until one is mortally injured.
The difference is that human beings do not even need to touch to injure each other. Words alone will do. And so it is. Almost everything the characters say – whether apologies, insults, plans, promises – are strategies of survival, attempts at having their view of themselves dominate over other people’s views of them. At the start of the action Trowbridge has John and M perform physical warmups as before a fight. Once the play proper begins, the battle consists entirely of words and mind games. The play continues in this vein when W and F join the fray.
Talk Is Free as [sic] assembled an ideal cast who are expert and bringing out the humour as well as the danger in the characters’ interactions. The play revolves around John, played by Jakob Ehman at his extraordinary best. It’s hard to imagine another actor who could make an essentially weak figure like John so fascinating. Ehman shows John as childish and petulant as well as innocent and fragile. Lying is John’s primary strategy for coping with the world, both to others and himself, but he lives in a harsh world where lies are soon exposed.
In a rare moment of reflection, John realizes that he does not really know who he is which is the flaw that makes him prey to others who are secure in who they are. Ehman is very funny and vulnerable in his depiction of John’s first experience of sex with a woman. But Ehman intimates that underneath all John says there lies a feeling of despair that he will never know himself. He knows he is too easily moulded by others but does not know how to escape that fate, whether the other is male or female. In the final scene Ehman has John hug himself in a pain he knows will never end. Ehman packs so much hurt and defeat in his final words the effect is absolutely devastating.
People may know Michael Torontow best as a singer but here he demonstrates he is equally fine as as actor. Torontow conveys the complex mixture of love and dominance that makes M who he is. M keeps claiming that he and John are like brothers, but we see that M is clearly the older brother who has no compunction about bullying his younger brother. When the situation devolves into a battle between M and W for John, we know that the feelings of possession and winning have superseded any feelings of love. John accuses M of being insecure and Torontow masterfully reveals this insecurity through the biting humour of M’s remarks and especially through the grotesque misogynist fantasies he has about what M’s girlfriend W must be like.
As with Torontow, people will also know Tess Benger best as a singer, with her Sally Bowles for the Grand Theatre in 2019 a particular triumph. But she certainly makes the role of W her own. Bartlett has arranged the action so that we hear negative things about W before we see her. When we do finally meet W, Benger makes us wonder what possible negatives there could be. Benger shows her as warm, caring and sensitive to John’s insecurities. Yet, Benger makes us realize that W, in the nicest possible way, is also manipulative. W has extensive plans for their life together that need no input from John. When W tells John that he is “the one” for her in her life, we can’t help but think what an enormous burden she has placed on such a weak person. We cringe when W suffers terrible abuse from both M and M’s father in the final scene, but Benger plays W as if W accepts such abuse as a challenge that only strengthens her resolve to take John away from such unkindness.
It is great to see Kevin Bundy on stage again. While he is best known for likable figures in comedy, here he shows he is equally strong playing an unlikable figure in drama. In other circumstances we might think it great that a father would fight for his gay son’s happiness. But here, Bundy reveals F as prejudiced before he even meets W, becoming harsher in his language once he sees W will not crumble under pressure as he expects a woman would. F’s actions indicate that M has not yet solidified into the relentless severity epitomized by F’s behaviour.
When the play first appeared in Britain and when it first appeared in Canada, critics naturally focussed on what seemed to be John’s dilemma of having to choose between two sexualities, bisexuality rapidly being excluded as an option. In 2024, sexuality seems almost beside the point. John could just as well be caught between two political views or two religions. The world Bartlett paints with such dark humour is one where only the fittest survive, and fitness for humans means having the most unshakeable belief in who you are. People who are still uncertain will be trodden under. In the highly polarized world we now inhabit, Cock has become only more relevant. The Talk Is Free production holds you tightly in its grip from beginning to end. Despite all the laughter, the ending is shattering. Cock has already sold out all performances. Let’s hope TIFT takes the show elsewhere.
Christopher Hoile
