Cock
by Mike Bartlett
The Kitchen Theatre Company

“Cock, Mike Bartlett's mad whirling dervish of sex, betrayal, and shifting choices, has come to the Kitchen in an electrifying production. Under Margarett Perry’s taut direction, the three central protagonists etch their struggles and half-broken yet still brewing dreams with juicy, haunting specificity. I found myself shifting my allegiances and found that true of other audience members in fervent after-show discussions.”

- Ithaca Stages

“Resident director Margarett Perry stages the high-stakes argument — 90 minutes nonstop — dynamically. As scripted, there’s no props, no miming, leaving the four characters to face off in a torrent of words — rapid-fire Brit dialogue that’s furious, fragmented, and naturally explosive. Tenderness, nakedness, even a sexual encounter are conveyed brilliantly with the actors farther than arm’s length from each other. Save two brief moments between John and W, all the connections are in our mind. It’s first-rate theatre”

- Ithaca Journal

“Cock  is a tautly directed, electric dark comedy that never gives you a minute to catch your breath.”

- Syracuse New Times

 “The actor’s stage, with audience seating on all four sides of the central plane, is set like a boxing ring, a cockfighting ring, or perhaps a metaphorical section of a castle battlement where instead of roaming around the wall, the actors shift and jab with their words, maneuvering around each other, away from each other; there are no props: no furniture to sit in, nor food that they eat. Battlement—battleground—it is the 90-minute play’s epicenter for bullying anger, charismatic laughter, and wrenching heartache”

- Ithaca Times