Review – Cock, Royal Court

Things weren’t looking good as the Whingers entered the Royal Court‘s upstairs auditorium. The Court was very much in officiousness overdrive up there.

It’s all so very, very strict. Greeted by a humourless usher who makes an airport security official look like Pollyanna, instructions come thick and fast: you may take one small bag in if you rest it on your lap; “double check your phone is off” (a good thing, granted); only bottled water is allowed. Yes water! No wine, how on earth were the Whingers going to last one and three quarter hours without sustenance?

Yes, there are many hoops to be jumped through if you wish to see Mike Bartlett‘s Cock.

There, yes, we couldn’t resist an entendre. We thought about defeating expectations by not acknowledging it but temptation proved irresistible, not least (surprisingly) to Andrew who spent most of last week phoning the Royal Court box office and adopting a range of voices to enquire, “Could you tell me how long Mike Bartlett’s Cock is?” before hanging up in fits of giggles. No doubt the Court is still laughing about it now.

The main hoop, of course, is that it is now sold out.

Anyway. Mike Bartlett’s Cock is a four-hander. There are three characters called M, W and F (presumably for man, woman and father). Only Bright Star star Ben Whishaw‘s character has a name and he’s playfully called John (though no doubt the writer toyed with Willy, Bob or Thomas).

M (Andrew Scott, left with Whishaw) and John are partners but when John meets W (IT Crowd‘s Katherine Parkinson), sleeps with her and falls for her he is wracked with indecision about who he really wants to be with.

There is no set and the audience is compelled to sit on ugly uncomfortable plywood benches, mini-arena style (no backrests except for those in the back row) around the acting space. There is no furniture nor are there any props. There isn’t even any miming of props (propery?): if someone passes the wine you don’t see it. Phil sees this as a whizzo ruse the next time Andrew asks him to pass him the bottle.

James MacDonald‘s production almost convinced the Whingers that theatre in the round can work. We say almost, the director keeps the actors moving around so you can see their faces but there are still times you want to see everything. But we’re not complaining about seeing the intensity of the actors up so close. This is probably as good as it gets for this form of staging which is praise indeed.

The lighting is ghastly (deliberately. Thanks Peter Mumford): lit with fluorescent tubes from above it’s horribly even and spills onto the audience so you’re always aware of people sitting across the stage and despite the looking to see if they’re laughing as much as you are or wondering how they managed to get such a huge handbag past the Royal Court goons.

All of which is just getting the niggling out of the way before announcing that Mike Bartlett’s Cock is fantastic: one of the best things we have seen this year. Right up there with Jerusalem. Despite the Mark Ravenhill-style provocative title and the gimmickry the play is surprisingly conventional. Bartlett has a wonderful turn of phrase (John apparently wears “a halo of disorganisation” and is “like a picture drawn in pencil and not coloured in”). Sometimes it’s incredibly funny (such as W expressing her arousal: “I’ve got a gap-on”) and it is utterly gripping and very moving.

Bartlett’s writing is given everything it deserves by the excellent cast. Parkinson (right, who apparently studied at the Tiffin Girls’ School) is tantalisingly inscrutable and Whishaw is both depressingly skinny (Andrew estimates a 26 inch waist) and frustratingly endearing. The Whingers now wish they’d seen Whishaw’s highly praised Danish prince, his convincing but maddening indecisiveness must have been honed in that part, but here his John makes Hamlet look like Margaret Thatcher.

But it is Scott who especially took the Whingers’ breaths away with a performance which was both heart-rending and magnificently humorous, not least in the unbearably embarrassing dinner for the love triangle players plus M’s father (Paul Jesson, also excellent) although Phil was at times put in mind of Graham Norton what with the Irish delivery and all.

And what’s more amazing than any of this, it made the Whingers think. And talk. About the play. Bartlett’s writing has enough ambiguity in it to create some doubts as to what you’ve just seen. Andrew read W and M as controlling and of John complicit in that. Phil hadn’t initially been convinced by the subject of the play. He’d always thought male bisexuality was having your cock and eating it. But he saw Cock as a metaphor for relationships in general. You want a bit of this person a little bit of that person and underlying all this is a message that nobody is perfect for another, perfect relationships can’t exist and that we can never really be completely satisfied. Very bleak.

Did we mention how much we admired Mike Bartlett’s Cock? Andrew is seriously considering cancelling his super dooper priority membership at the National Theatre becoming a friend of the Royal Court instead.

Cock is sold out for the entire run – yet another hit for the Royal Court. It would be tricky to transfer in its present form but it definitely deserves a longer run. This is one Cock that needs extending.