Reviews 2014
Reviews 2014
✭✭✭✭✩
by Mike Bartlett, directed by Joel Greenberg
Studio 180, The Theatre Centre, Toronto
April 6-27, 2014
M to John: “What are you? ... you don’t seem to have grown coherently – You’re a collection of things that don’t amount – You’re a sprawl – A mob. – You don’t add up”
Let’s not beat around the bush. The title of Mike Bartlett’s 2009 play gives you no clue to its subject matter. It’s not about farmyards, plumbing, firearms or porn. It is a bitingly witty play about a bisexual triangle in which the central character John can’t decide between a man and a woman. The comedy as the characters score hit after hit in this verbal battle is exhilarating enough. But what makes the play more than a series of put-downs and zingers are the questions it raises about why people pigeonhole each other.
John (Andrew Kushnir), the only named character, has been living with M (Jeff Miller) 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 (Jessica Greenberg), 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, had 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 (Ian D. Clark).
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. On another level, Bartlett shows that John can’t decide anything because he doesn’t know who he is, and falling into a relationship at a young age has prevented the kind of experimentation that might have helped him etch his identity. W, for example, married when she was 21 but divorced her husband two years later when she knew the marriage wasn’t working.
Noel Coward’s Design for Living (1933) has the celebratory bisexual conclusion where two men and a woman will all live together since each of them loves the other two. Joe Orton’s Entertaining Mr. Sloane (1964) has the more cynical conclusion where the bisexual Mr. Sloane will spend half the year with Kath and the other half with her brother Ed, who also fancies him. Bartlett, however, mentions bisexuality only once and it is not considered as an option for John by either M or W. Much as they say they “love” him, each wants John exclusively for their own purposes. W says that she needs someone to keep her from feeling lonely on the weekends when all she sees are couples together. M needs John to stay because he can’t endure change.
The cleverness of Bartlett’s play is how he allows our allegiances to change. We first see John’s indecisiveness and mendacity as the source of all of his problems, but by the end when John is curled up on the floor, we have to wonder how a person is to “fit in” when none of the choices are right. What for most of its 90 minutes was an uproarious comedy ends with a real sense of melancholy that none of the characters has gotten what he or she really wanted.
Andrew Kushnir gives an absolutely superb performance as John. He managed to make John both loveable and infuriating at once. His comic timing is perfect and his use of frozen facial expressions when John hears the opposite of what he is expecting is priceless. Even though this is nominally a comedy, Kushnir also conveys the growing desperation in John as the time comes closer for his big decision. Here he really draws our sympathy because we can see how the situation M has created is tearing him in two.
Jeff Miller gives a finely nuanced performance as M. Bartlett makes clear that M’s bullying of John is a reflection of his own dissatisfaction with himself. When we meet M’s father, played with keen insight by Ian D. Clark, we can see M is simply replicating the kind of emotional bullying he grew up with. There is more to W than Jessica Greenberg finds there, particularly the less positive aspect of W’s manipulation of John for her own ends. But she does reflect the coldness of the character if not the warmth that would have drawn John to her.
Director Joel Greenberg has staged the play in the round with all the action taking place on a green square playing area. Each scene ends with the sound of a bell as if each encounter were a round in a fight. This metaphor may reinforce the idea of struggle, but it is a bit unfair since it is clear from the beginning that John and M are not equally matched. As John realizes, his seven years with M have kept him in a state of delayed development and undermined his self-confidence.
Cock is an exciting, vibrant play where bisexuality becomes a metaphor for any traits people may have that frustrate society’s desire to classify people for its own benefit, not theirs. We have to wonder what point classifiability is meant to serve. It is a thought-provoking evening that should lead to many discussions long after John has made his final decision.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photos: (from top) Jeff Miller, Andrew Kushnir and Jessica Greenberg; Andrew Kushnir and Jeff Miller; Jessica Greenberg and Andrew Kushnir. ©2014 Kari North.
For tickets, visit http://studio180theatre.com.
2014-04-11
Cock