A young man finds himself torn between two lovers, one male and one female, in Mike Bartlett’s provocative comedic four-hander Cock, one of the most impressively staged and performed productions I’ve seen at Hollywood Fringe since the festival was inaugurated back in 2010.

Not that a pre-cheating John (Mathew Dunlop) hadn’t already been letting his boyfriend M (Sean Hemeon) down in a multitude of ways, all-in-all fucking things up with a lover who is, to his discredit, particularly adept at putting his younger, more dependent other-half in his place.

It’s perhaps no wonder, then, that when John decides to assert his independence, it’s by bedding a woman (Annika Chavez as W), and even being told that his male lover’s female lover is “quite manly” (“What? Big hands? Shoulders? Penis?”) does little to reassure M that his relationship with John can ever be put to rights.

What better way, then, for John and M to get everything out in the open than to invite W over for dinner, though once she has shown up at their doorstep, all bets are off, and the subsequent arrival of M’s father (Dennis Delsing as F) only adds fuel to the fire.

Playwright Bartlett keeps us guessing about John’s sexuality even as our hapless hero himself attempts to understand his sudden, unexpected interest in someone of the female persuasion, the 2009 play scoring points for examining sexual fluidity at a time when the line between gay and straight seemed more etched in stone than it has become a dozen years later.

The playwright has also left just about everything up to a director to figure out, providing nothing but dialog to work with—no character descriptions, no scene-setting, no stage directions, zilch. Bartlett even goes so far as to mandate “no scenery, no props, no furniture, and no mime,” quite a challenge indeed, but it’s one that director Taubert Nadalini is more than up to as he displays one ingenious directorial stroke after another.

Inspired by Cock’s alternate title (a safer-for-advertising The Cockfight Play), Nadalini has staged several John-vs.-M confrontations with the two lovers circling each other like boxers in a ring, a motif enhanced by the rotating ring of light which Hayden Kirschbaum projects down onto the floor of an otherwise completely bare in-the-round set.

Scenes transition lickety-split from one to the next, appropriately punctuated by a boxing match bell (one of sound designer Nadalini’s numerous striking effects) as Kirschbaum’s lighting signals numerous flashes forward and back in time. (A scene in which John finds himself torn apart by the people he loves is a particular lighting design stunner, with M, W, and F each illuminated with a different saturated primary color and John lit entirely in white.)

Transposing Cock from its original UK setting to an American milieu, director Nadalini has elicited four powerful performances on the Davidson/Valentini stage, enhanced on multiple occasions by Caribay Franke’s expressive movement choreography.

Dunlop’s John reveals an endearing simplicity and sweetness that makes his sexual/emotional confusion all the more touching; Chavez’s W is the kind of woman you do not want to tangle with, especially if you intend to rob her of a man she believes she’s won fair and square; and Delsing’s F has a blue-collar edge that makes his open-hearted acceptance of his son’s sexuality even more touching.

Most remarkable of all is Hemeon’s quicksilver star turn as M, a stunner of a performance that’s as spontaneous and electrifying as it is heartbreakingly real.

Cock is presented by Clearglass Productions. Maggie Marx is stage manager. Matthew Richter is technical director. Ken Werther is publicist.

I’ve seen enough productions at previous Hollywood Fringe Festivals to know when one so surpasses Fringe expectations that it deserves to be held over or revived exactly as staged. Indeed I can’t think of a better way to reopen the Lily Tomlin/Jane Wagner Cultural Arts Center to live theater productions than by giving Taubert Nadalini’s stunning take on Cock a much-deserved full-length run.

The Davidson/Valentini Theatre, 1125 N. McCadden Place, Los Angeles.
www.hollywoodfringe.org/projects/7408

–Steven Stanley
June 15, 2022
Photos: Taubert Nadalini

Tags: Davidson/Valentini Theatre, Hollywood Fringe Festival, Los Angeles Theater Review, Mike Bartlett