‘Cockfight Play’

The Duke on 42nd Street, New York

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The actual four-letter title of this sharp, dazzling comedy might upset censors, but Mike Bartlett’s London import is “far from a sensationalistic shocker,” said Rex Reed in The New York Observer. Bartlett’s 2010 Olivier Award winner focuses on a love triangle—a centuries-old dramatic staple that’s not made markedly original by the detail that the torn lover is deciding between an older man he’s long slept with and a woman who’s just unlocked “a latent heterosexuality he never thought possible.” What’s remarkable is the execution, how script and performers combine to provide penetrating insight into “the paralyzing indecision that can result” for anyone deeply unsure of who they are in life and love.

The battle for the protagonist’s heart reaches near-gladiatorial proportions, said Ben Brantley in The New York Times. C--k is not a soft-hearted portrayal of a young man wrestling with his sexual identity but an “oddly energizing exercise in emotional carnage.” Only the protagonist has a name: John—who’s played by “spindly” Cory Michael Smith. The characters vying for his affections are known only as M (Jason Butler Harner) and W (Amanda Quaid), both of whom crave victory in part because each has become enthralled by the prospect of determining John’s fate. Director James Macdonald stages the whole showdown in a tight, austere space to suggest the “to-the-death battles of penned animals.”

For a long time, John refuses to commit to either combatant, said Scott Brown in New York magazine. “Why are you telling me I have to know what I am?” he demands to know. “I love him because he makes me toast in bed.…I love her because she makes me feel as old as I really am.” Smith is “an adept poker player in a role that challenges our basic vanities,” and somehow makes his often maddeningly fickle character “all the more attractive from his lack of self-definition.” It’s also remarkable that he, Harner, and Quaid convey physical intimacy with words rather than action. All remain clothed and barely touch throughout the play, yet they manage to make this “the most erotic entertainment to hit Times Square” in many years.