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.