Cock – Melbourne Theatre Co

Overview

From the mind of Englishman, Mike Bartlett, this play starts with a kind of ending. The relationship of John (Tom Conroy) and his older partner, M (Angus Grant), is in its death throes. After years spent together the two men have grown distant, and as soon as they’re apart John meets W (Sophie Ross) — a woman who gives him everything his partner had neglected. They have sex, they fall in love, but John’s stuck. He wants to go back to his partner, wants to stay with W — he wants to make a decision. What follows is a tortuous conflict between the three over his affections, ending in a passive-aggressive, farcical dinner between the 'couples' as well as M’s father F (Tony Rickards), who makes a late appearance in the piece. While this basic premise of the love triangle could seem a bit naff, the play makes some bold choices (as its name suggests), some of which overshoot their target.

The cast of four deliver warm and well-rounded performances, especially Angus Grant as the uptight M — he manages to balance some of the play’s most vicious (and funny) lines with sensitivity and tenderness. And this is lucky because performance is really all you have to go on. The set is made up mostly of 250 thick pillows, which cover the floor and are rearranged by the characters in transitions between scenes. It’s in these transitions that the director's (Leticia Caceres) stark vision for the play is most transparent and at times these shifts feel laboured — although the convention it sets up is sometimes smashed to devastating effect once it’s been established, throwing the audience headlong into the middle of confrontation. Caceres’ approach is one that removes props and a representational aesthetic, foregrounding the text and the relationships between the characters. But it’s difficult to tell how important the original script’s Englishness is and what might be lost with Australian accents and an abstract setting. Some might argue it’s essential to the mannered bitchiness the text demands, but ultimately the fact that Caceres and her actors convey the story so clearly speaks to something more universal about the fraught relationships that Bartlett has captured.

Some sequences spark perfectly. In particular, the sex scene between John and W — his first time with a woman — is executed with exquisite awkwardness and bravery. But, much like John himself, at times Bartlett’s play seems unsure of its identity. The love and chemistry at the heart of these moments sits uncomfortably with the play’s brutal, backbiting comedy. At times the ambiguity is thrilling; at others, it's surprisingly irritating.

What’s perhaps most interesting about Cock is the way in which the central character, John, is so thoroughly unlikeable. Like an even more effete Hamlet, he’s caught up in endless prevarication and self-doubt yet still somehow strongly desired by both M and W. Conroy’s performance gives us so many opportunities to ask ourselves why anyone would find John appealing, and that speaks to the play’s central concern — we’ve got no control over who we fall in love with.