“Cock,” Mike Bartlett’s caustic relationship drama, premiered only 16 years ago. But it already feels dated.
Our society in 2009 was far different than the world today. The public’s perception of LGBTQ issues was rapidly changing. Same-sex marriage was only legal in seven countries. In Bartlett’s native U.K., it would take another 11 years before those rights were fully granted.
In that milieu, it’s easy to see how “Cock” would have challenged audiences, many of whom were only beginning to understand the meaning of terms “gay” or “lesbian.” Bartlett’s play, however, dared audiences to move beyond those labels, asking them to consider how sexuality is fluid and, more broadly, how our identities evolve as we grow.
Perhaps this was slightly provocative back then. Now, though? Not so much. Time and social progress have diminished the impact of Bartlett’s story.
How, then, do you stage “Cock” in 2025?
Director Dylan Trowbridge offers a shining example. His minimalist, site-specific production, now running at the Carlaw Industrial Centre, jolts this dated play back to life. Emotionally charged in every moment, and dripping with a sense of danger at every turn, this revival isn’t looking for its audience’s sympathy, as previous productions might have done. Trowbridge knows that’s an all-too-easy bar to meet.
Instead, the director seeks our empathy. He wants us not only to understand the plight of the play’s central character. Far deeper than that, he wants us to step into this character’s shoes: to feel what he feels, to see what he sees. In effect, he’s turned “Cock” into a gripping psychodrama.
John (Jakob Ehman) is in the midst of a sexual-identity crisis. His seven-year relationship with his male partner, only referred to as M (Michael Torontow), is wearing thin. He’s also seeing a woman, W (Tess Benger), behind M’s back.
She’s the first woman that John has been involved with and, through their affair, he experiences a sort of sexual awakening.
Even after he mends things with his long-time partner, John continues seeing W. It all culminates with a dinner party — a cockfight, if you will — where M and W square off, and John must choose one lover over the other.
There’s a key character in “Cock” whose presence underlines Bartlett’s intentions with the play. Late in the 90-minute drama — as the John and his two lovers prepare for dinner — an unexpected fourth guest arrives who upends the evening.
Played with severe steeliness by Kevin Bundy, he’s a foil to John’s character and originally intended, I think, to be a stand-in for the audience. “It’s simply down to the chemicals in your brain,” rails Bundy’s character, referred to as F. “They go one way you like girls, they go the other way you like men.”
To which John responds: “Maybe it’s not a switch, one way or the other. Maybe it’s more like a stew, complicated things bubbling up.”
I don’t think this scene lands with the same force as it might have in the past. At the performance I attended, at least, it felt the audience was firmly on John’s side — no matter that it was him ruining the relationship.
But Trowbridge ups the ante in other ways. His fast-paced revival never takes its foot off the gas. Kathleen Black’s designs are stark, toying with light and shadows. And the production’s warehouse setting — with the audience sitting around the stage — only adds to the eerie atmosphere.
There’s constantly a sense that John’s world is closing in on him. I felt it, too, through Ehman’s performance. Like his equally brilliant turn as the title character in “Roberto Zucco” earlier this season, Ehman’s John is terribly tormented — increasingly so as M, W and F continuously turn the screws on him, pushing John toward a cliff that he does not want to face.
I don’t think it’s any spoiler to say that “Cock” ends somewhat tragically. It’s only inevitable. John, forced to live in a world of binaries, instead inhabits the wide and muddy morass in between. But at least in this electrifying production, he’s not alone. We, the audience, are beside him, following John every step of the way.
