Review: Cock by Theatre en Bloc
by David Glen Robinson

Theatre en Bloc presents Cock by Mike Bartlett at the Off Center in east Austin, October 3 through 26, 2014. As advertised, the award-winning play is about a young man who leaves his boyfriend, meets a woman, and then returns to question his sexual identity. Forget actually changing it. Merely questioning it is enough to pitch one into the abyss of unknowing, as this brilliant play informs us in roaring, penetrating detail. Its refreshing humor keeps the playwright firmly on the audience’s side, reassuringly so.

Theatre en Bloc’s production of Cock is a directorial masterwork. With a cast brilliantly talented across the board, Director Derek Kolluri crafts a 110-minute performance of high emotional intensity, yet with carefully varied levels. The characters present their stories with every facial tic, quiver, shake, and tear fully revealed for maximum effect on the audience. The emotional violence is rending, but physical violence is limited to one face slap. Likewise sex: descriptions are explicit, but behavior is restricted to a bout of heavy breathing with no physical contact. This tone and atmosphere reflect Kolluri’s exquisite judgment and choices. Tawdry scenes are broken by moments of humor. The breaks allow the audience members to laugh, breathe, and perhaps mentally review their own tawdry pasts. The total effect is that the audience leaves at the end of the show ashamed of itself for so keenly enjoying this intimate and revealing play. Oscar Wilde would have loved Cock.

The players are Zac Carr, Ryan Hamilton, Jenny Lavery, and Dennis Bailey; they are all extremely well cast. The play is English, with English references and place names. The cast uses English accents and intonations in their dialogues, and they hold them even in the extremes of emotion. Derek Kolluri and Bernadette Nason share the credit as Dialect Coach and Dialect Consultant, respectively. Zac Carr, the riven one, plays John, the only named character. Ryan Hamilton takes yet another star turn as M. Jenny Lavery plays W, for woman; she asserts her immense power in the dinner scene in the lair of her sexual enemies. Dennis Bailey inhabits a retired working-class man, one with an agenda.

The costumes and lighting design are monochromatic, and the production plays in the round without props. A large white painted circle on the black stage floor looks like a white highway line, and it delimits the playing area. Raked seating rises on four sides. A loud boxing bell clangs the scene changes.

And here lies a slight difficulty with the production. In a play with many nuanced moments of emotional distress, key responses from time to time are blocked from viewing by one or more actors’ backs. This is a limitation of in-the-round productions, even with superior, varied blocking as here. A note to the audience: sit toward the back and higher in the seating to lessen the effects of obscured blocking.

Cock flies to its end and offers us a real ending, not a contemporary, ambiguous, decide-for-yourself closing that drives theatre audiences straight into the arms of the cineplex. And throughout the play, we learn that families and relationships are not about love and sex. Hell, love and sex are not about love and sex. They are about power and control and nothing else.

Cock runs until October 26^th, 2014 at the Off Center in east Austin. Strongly recommended for all of an age to know already the facts of life.

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Cock
by Mike Bartlett
Theatre en Bloc