Theater review: Poetic meditations on bisexuality in the age of anxiety in ‘Cock’

The title of Red Turnip Theater’s latest production, “Cock,” may either offend or excite prurience.

But before any undue or excessive "righteous" alarm is sounded, “Cock” is simply the story of a person who is on a journey, trying to find his true self and identity. It can be anybody, of any gender or sexual orientation, and economic or social status.

In “Cock,” British playwright Mike Bartlett uses that ancient trope, the love triangle, and pushes it. Instead of a woman pursued by two men or a man pining for two women, the narrative of “Cock” centers on a gay man named John, who just broke up with his lover M.

In a moment of greatest weakness, John has sex with a recently divorced woman named W, whom he met casually at a London tube station. Spoiler: there is no nudity in the production.

Delighted by his unprecedented sexual experience with the female species, John starts thinking he is indeed bisexual. Confusion, then, sets in.

John, to sort things out among the three of them, badgers M, asking permission if he can bring W to the dinner in their flat, they once shared. M invites his father F, in return, without informing John.

The dinner table conversation turns ugly and vicious, setting the arena where M and W slug it out like Roman gladiators hungry for blood and ready to die in pursuit of their prize: John.

On top of this unusual love triangle and a verbal annihilation via punchy lines that zing and zap, “Cock” is also about people paralyzed by indecisions and inaction. It is also about power play—or, to be more precise, power over the weak and the indecisive, notably in the warzone called love.

Intense energy

Rem Zamora launches his directorial career in “Cock,” which won the 2010 Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theater. For this local production, he chose Topper Fabregas to play the role of the indecisive John, Niccolo Manahan as M, Jenny Jamora as W, and Audie Gemora as F.

Fabregas, Manahan, Jamora, and Gemora (who entered the deadly combat zone in the last 30 minutes) should be commended for evenly sustaining the intense energy and passions of the characters during the 90 minutes of the play, without intermission.

The four showed the nuanced emotional strength demanded in almost all the scenes to deliver a show with the brutality of a person willing to shed blood to protect his interest in the face of an imminent danger.

Without any props to assist them and with only a bare set and great lighting, the cast had to rely on their acting skills and their bodies to convey the intent of the scriptwriter and the director.

Zamora, in his attempt to show the audience the progress of the play, had his characters appear on stage one pair at a time most of the time. He made one pair of characters face each other, turn to the audience, walk around each other, at one point rhythmically moving sideways as if lost in a trance.

But all these movements seem to denote acts of predators watching their catch, assessing them, and waiting for the perfect time to lunge at and kill them.

The cast

Fabregas as John is both beautiful and handsome in his pain and frustration. He is able to utilize his expressive facial features to convey his psychological messiness and constant vacillation. His gazes toward M and W emit desire, anger, and bewilderment, like a child needing assurance.

However, Fabregas needs to add more ardor in the scene where he and W become intimate. He has to show more amazement in his new “discovery” in the female anatomy.

“Some people might think you were scrawny. But I think you’re like a picture drawn with a pencil. I like it. You haven’t been colored in,” W intones to John in one scene.

In securing her catch, Jamora, as a woman trying to compose herself following her divorce, unleashes her commanding theatrical skills in emotionally blackmailing John to choose her over M.

As for Manahan, he seemingly effortlessly delivers as John's domineering, control-freak lover. “You are a collection of things that don’t amount. You do not add up,” he tells John.

Manahan has a lot of moments here, with his voice inflection, flailing of hands, controlled swaying of hips, and arching of the eyebrows and lips.

Gemora, while appearing only toward the end of the play, manages to drill a big mark and entertains the audience with his verbal exchange with W as he leads her out of the flat. He also succeeds in giving the impression that he himself has sexual ambiguities.

Gemora catches up with the Fabregas, Jamora, and Manahan in making his persona stay with the audience.

The cockpit arena

Zamora tapped Denis Lagdameo to design a bare set for “Cock,” which evokes the atmosphere of a cockpit arena: a circular space with a blood-red carpet accentuated by five marks to guide the actors where to stand. Brown wooden fences to separate the actors from the audience. There were no other props.

Lagdameo creatively employs the “theater-in-the-round” concept to further heighten the cockpit feel—or perhaps the feel of an ancient Roman coliseum, with seats encircling the center space in layers.

Lighting designer John Batalla's use of parabolic aluminized reflector lamps, commonly found in real cockfighting arenas in the Philippines, added to the beauty of the simple set.

Batalla placed the spotlights in the four corners of the hall, which served as the theater, and dimmed the spotlights according to the intensity of the emotions conveyed by the performers.

Similarly, sound designer Jethro Joaquin limited the sound effects only to a bell struck by stage manager Goldie Soon to signal the beginning and end of scene, successfully recalling a boxing match and at the same time completing the cockpit arena experience.  — BM, GMA News

"Cock" runs from March 7 to April 6 at Whitespace, 2314 Chino Roces Ave. Extension, Makati. For details, call 891-9999 or visit the Red Turnip Theater Facebook page.

A journalist since 1983, Ibarra C. Mateo has worked as an international wire correspondent based in Tokyo covering Asian politics. He returned to Manila after studying Japanese history and Japanese urban sociology at the Sophia University Graduate School. Mateo has no relevant affiliations with any company or organization that would benefit from this review. The views expressed in this article are the author's own.