Cock is tense. It is beau­ti­ful, jar­ringly intim­ate, and phe­nom­en­ally craf­ted. It’s also com­pletely heart­break­ing.

Circa One’s set (designed by Sean Lynch) inspires thoughts of a box­ing ring, or a fash­ion show – in the round, with bright lights cast down onto a white floor below. The audi­ence sits on three sides; I view the play straight on.

Our act­ors stand out in stark con­trast to the land­scape. There are no props in this show, no built up set, no cos­tume changes. All writ­ten nud­ity is clothed, all spicy scenes done with very little phys­ic­al touch­ing, and mostly with words. It’s a fas­cin­at­ing form of intim­acy, for many reas­ons, and works incred­ibly well.

Jack Buchanan plays John, a scruffy but like­able, “guy next door”, who’s a little bit lost. He’s in love with his ex (?) boy­friend, M, (Simon Leary), but he wants the gen­tle­ness and tenacity of his girl­friend, W (Karin McCrack­en). He’s con­fused, some­what, because he’s only ever been in love with men before, and he does­n’t think the label ‘bi’ fits, but he loves his girl­friend too.

All action comes to a head when M invites W over to din­ner. Along­side M’s fath­er, F – who des­per­ately wants John to stay with M – the fight­ing reaches its cli­max – a lit­er­al cock­fight on the stage for all to see – and John makes his choice.

A ‘nor­mal’ rela­tion­ship, or the one he’s always known?

A woman or a man?

Ideo­lo­gic­ally, from the point of view of a queer per­son, this play is fas­cin­at­ing. No-one is truly happy at the end of the piece, with all people want­ing more. Things haven’t exactly changed, and the char­ac­ters haven’t moved too far from where they star­ted, but they’re affected all the same. Who do we side with? How does this play make us con­sider our own queer­ness? What are we actu­ally look­ing for?

Simon Leary brings an uppity poise to the char­ac­ter of M, who’s a broker, emo­tion­ally insec­ure and rags on John con­stantly for every little thing. The char­ac­ter is incred­ibly unlikable and emo­tion­ally abus­ive – for the pur­poses of the story, of course – and he’s played with incred­ible alac­rity. Des­pite the traits of the char­ac­ter, Leary deliv­ers some of the fun­ni­est lines in the show.

Karin McCrack­en  – W – is strong-willed and not afraid to call any­one on their bull­shit. She is the whole­some foil to M, someone who cares about John and shows it openly, and her range is incred­ible.

Matt Cham­ber­lain comes in in the lat­ter part of the show as F, M’s fath­er, who really wants M and John to stay togeth­er, des­pite being a little con­fused about how their rela­tion­ship came about. For queer people with mod­er­ately accept­ing par­ents, he’s imme­di­ately recog­niz­able – not quite “get­ting it”, not quite there, but at least try­ing to be sup­port­ive, even if he’s mis­guided in how he goes about it.

Cock is truly a play about love; and how relent­less and fucked up and hard it can be. Shane Bosh­er­’s dir­ec­tion is fant­ast­ic, with ten­sion held on a knife’s edge for most of the piece. All the char­ac­ters stare each oth­er down like they’re on the verge of an old-west gun­fight, vying for affec­tion, love, accept­ance.

Buchanan spends con­sid­er­able moments in silence near the end of the play, weigh­ing up an impossible choice. His per­form­ance is vis­cer­al, taught and tense, heart­break­ing. It’s almost a little hard to watch, and I com­mend the sheer act­ing strength put into hit­ting that break­ing point.

If you’re going to see any play at Circa this year, make it this one. I will def­in­itely be going back for more.

 

Cock is on at Circa Theatre in Wel­ling­ton until the 9th of Novem­ber. Tick­ets here.