Questions about identity, love linger in British play

Director accepts of challenge of selling bisexual love triangle amid yuletide fare

Jessica Aquila Cymerman can recall the line in Mike Bartlett’s play Cock that first resonated with her. “It’s ‘I seem to be holding her hand, don’t I?’ And the actors obviously aren’t touching. And it blew my mind. Because that’s what theatre can be.”

Cymerman is the director of a coming production of the 2009 play, which she is also co-producing through her company Untold Wants Theatre. In the play, John has left his seven-year relationship with M, a man, and falls in love with W, a woman.

Bartlett’s theme isn’t bisexuality but, as the Guardian puts it, “the paralyzing indecision that stems from not knowing who one really is.”

Another review says that Cock “succeeds because (Bartlett) only focuses on his characters. In fact, we see nothing else but endless entertaining and wrenching dialogue.”

“The play is not preachy,” Cymerman said. “It does not come to a conclusion. Every single character has their own voice. Each character has their own beliefs about relationships, about sexuality, about society, about what it means to love, what it means to be a successful person, what it means to be happy. It sets up this question: Does whom we love dictate who we are?”

Preston Vanderslice plays M, and M.J. Kehler is W; Kehler is a former student of Untold Wants’ acting classes. Gerard Plunkett plays a fourth, later entry to the action, F. For the pivotal role of John, Karl Mercer has stepped in. He’s the third actor with whom Cymerman worked on the role.

“The script is so unique and scary, for lack of a better word. Because there are no props, there are no sets, there is no stage direction. There’s no kind of milling about, where the character makes a sandwich. It’s just the actor in his or her body expressing all of what needs to be going on in their imagination onstage. A lot of actors feel intimidated by that. It’s you, just kind of naked, with your own craft.”

Along with the writing, that nakedness and the resulting communion

with the audience is the kind of theatre magic that attracted her to Bartlett’s play, Cymerman says.

“There’s so much that you can play with where the audience, through their imaginations, can meet you halfway,” she said. “There’s a sex scene, essentially. But nobody touches. It’s all in your imagination, and in the energy that the actors are offering.”

Cock is the second play in Vancouver from Untold Wants. Cymerman started the company in Dublin, where she was studying, with her partner Eanna O’Dowd. Their first production here, last year’s The Human Ear, was also written by a Brit, Alexandra Wood.

“Absolute coincidence,” says Cymerman of the two plays’ country of origin. “These were just the plays we wanted to do right away.” The company’s next show, in February, is Gruesome Playground Injuries by American playwright Rajiv Joseph. And they are looking to do a musical next. “Typically, that’s a very North American genre. The musicals we have our eyes on are written by Americans.”

Asked to sell a play called Cock about a bisexual love triangle to an audience in a season full of Nutcrackers, Wonderful Lifes, and Christmas Carols, Cymerman rises to the challenge.

“We have all these jokes about what not to talk about around the dinner table at Christmas,” she said. “And this play mimics any time families are forced to come together and have dinner with those kinds of dynamics because it does end in a family dinner where all of the conflicts in the play come to a head.

“Also, it’s just so funny. The pantos and holiday shows are a bit of an escape, and everyone wants to come together and feel that magical Christmas feeling. This play will do that. You will see yourself in it. And you’ll be able to laugh.”