COCK BLOODY DIFFICULT WOMEN
Ambassadors Theatre until June 4 Tickets: 03330 096 690
Don’t be put off by the title. Mike Bartlett’s play isn’t as pornographic as it sounds. First seen in 2009, it is as much about relationships and identity as it is about sex. Given the current debates over gender categorisation, the issues on display are more pertinent than ever.
Allegedly inspired by cockfighting, it is a battle for the affections of the epically indecisive John (Jonathan
Bailey, from TV’s Bridgerton) who has been living with boyfriend M (Taron ‘Kingsman’ Egerton) until afflicted by the seven-year itch. John subsequently has an affair with a woman, known only as W (Jade Anouka). Returning to the bereft M, he finds himself dilly-dallying between the two until a climactic dinner party where all three protagonists are joined by M’s well-meaning father F (Phil Daniels).
Marianne Elliott’s sharp and speedy production is played out against a curved wall of shining metal whose smoky distortions reflect the actors and their opaque desires and identities. Naturalism takes a back seat as there are no props, and all actions – including sexual encounters and undressing – are conducted in minimal mime.
And while the play pivots around serious conflicts, it is at times howlingly funny: John and M bicker like an old married couple; the pumped up, virile M conceals a wounded sensitivity; while John’s dithering faux femininity is revealed as self-obsessed narcissism.
Daniels is reliably superb as the solid, decent father, spouting homilies about romantic love, while Anouka’s W is smart, saucy and vulnerable.
Bartlett’s facility for digging down beyond surface cliches and redirecting sympathies mid-stream is formidable and, while Elliott discourages us from empathising too deeply with John’s predicament, Cock is acutely observed and finely played by all.
★★★ Riverside Studios until April 2 Tickets: 020 8237 1010
The debut play by journalist and critic Tim Walker is an admirable attempt at dramatising the spat between Theresa May (Jessica Turner) and businesswoman Gina Miller (Amara Karan) over the Prime Minister’s attempt to invoke Article 50 and trigger the UK’s withdrawal from the EU without Parliamentary approval.
The facts are filtered through the gauze of fiction as civil servants and journalists become servants to Walker’s intentions – to show the media’s role in manipulating the nation’s response to both women, especially the Daily Mail whose editor Paul Dacre (Andrew Woodall) is the torrentially potty-mouthed puppetmasterin-chief.
Walker has great fun with invented civil servant Sir Hugh Rosen (Graham Seed) as an apparently happily married family man who habitually employs pretty young boys as his personal assistants. But he comes a cropper with Dacre’s cliched and entirely unconvincing chief gunslinger/reporter (Calum Finlay) who speaks in Cockney rhyming slang to the editor’s bewilderment.
Otherwise, there is enough theatrical gristle to chew on in Stephen Unwin’s spartan but effective production, and it is salutary to be reminded of aspects of May and Miller’s backgrounds that gave them common ground.
Having exposed the patriarchal climate which almost suffocated both women, Walker delivers a sensitive coda, allowing them a brief moment of mutual understanding.