LONDON — There’s no nudity in “Cock,” the 2009 Mike Bartlett play that opened Tuesday in a starry revival at the Ambassadors Theater here. But by the time its 105 minutes, no intermission, have come to an end, you’ve seen its characters stripped emotionally bare.
The play has had quite a trajectory, from its London origins in the Royal Court’s 80-seat studio space to a run in New York (where it had the longer, less provocative title “The Cockfight Play”) and now to a commercial West End perch where tickets are going for three figures — prices you might find for a big musical like “Cabaret.”
The show’s director, Marianne Elliott, is a significant force in London theater, and the cast is led by Jonathan Bailey and Taron Egerton, two theater-trained actors more widely known these days onscreen. Bailey came to prominence in the Netflix series “Bridgerton,” while Egerton was a hugely charismatic Elton John in the biopic “Rocketman” and has starred in several of the “Kingsman” films.
The play’s author has enjoyed his own ascent. He won acclaim in London and on Broadway for “King Charles III,” which predicts how England’s monarchy might evolve after the queen dies, and has two new plays due in London this spring, one of which, “The 47th,” imagines Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign for the presidency. (That one opens next month at the Old Vic.)
“Cock,” by contrast, features no real-life characters. Only one of them gets an actual name: John (Bailey), a young man in crisis as he pivots between the affections of his male partner of seven years, a broker known simply as M (Egerton), and a female teaching assistant, W. After John and W have sex, he begins contemplating a new life.
Jade Anouka acquits herself beautifully as the outsider to a gay relationship on the ropes: a woman who asks for courtesy from M and is met with condescension and worse. He dismisses her job in the classroom as “babysitting,” and some of his euphemisms for the female anatomy will raise an eyebrow or two.
This defining trio widens in a climactic dinner party scene to include M’s father, F (a feisty Phil Daniels), who arrives in time for his son’s home-cooked beef and a “goopy” cheesecake that hasn’t gone quite according to plan. Not that we ever see food or, indeed, props of any kind. In keeping with the stripped-back demands of the writing, the action plays out on a curved bare set, designed by Merle Hensel and illuminated from above by the tubular rods of Paule Constable’s lighting.
The playbill credits a gender and sexuality consultant to the production, John Mercer, and includes a glossary of “LGBTQ+ terms,” such as “asexual” and “polyamory.” Some of those weren’t much in use when the play was written, but John would probably have rejected them, anyway: Asked repeatedly to decide who, or what, he is, he simply cannot answer, preferring an identity beyond labels.
I must confess to wondering midway through whether John was worth all this fuss. If this production is less moving than the Royal Court original, that may owe something to a different emphasis in the casting. In that show, the wraithlike Ben Whishaw fit perfectly with John’s pencil-drawing wiriness as described in the text. A vigorous, muscular Bailey, by contrast, looks more than able to take care of himself, and he brings to the part the same manic energy that distinguished his bravura performance in Elliott’s 2018 West End production of “Company,” for which he won an Olivier.
Egerton made headlines early in the show’s run when he fainted during the first preview, but he recovered quickly enough to joke about it on social media. Inheriting a part originated by Andrew Scott, Egerton brings a sad-eyed defensiveness to his role, reminding us that, in British parlance, to make a mess of things is “to cock things up.”
And things get really messy in the play’s final scene. “Off we go into battle,” remarks F as the episode begins. His readiness would be equally at home on the battlefield of “Henry V,” currently lit up by some star wattage of its own through April 9 at the Donmar Warehouse, where the “Game of Thrones” star Kit Harington is in firm command of the challenging title role.
Presented in modern dress and with multiple gender flips (as is the Shakespeare norm in London these days), the production charts a neat path between the potential jingoism of a play celebrating England’s military prowess and the dubious aspects of its martial conquests. England’s success comes at sizable cost to France, whose princess, Katherine (Anoushka Lucas), is more or less ordered to be Henry’s bride, without much say in the matter.
The play is from the same director, Max Webster, whose show “Life of Pi” received nine Olivier award nominations last week; that adaptation of the Yann Martel novel, still running in London, features inventive puppetry and stagecraft. In “Henry V,” however, the impact comes from the characters, particularly Henry, who abandons his drunken, carousing ways to become a man of war. If Harington finds a compelling ambivalence in the role, that’s because Henry, rather like John in “Cock,” discovers he is a man divided: a sensitive soul whose legacy, he comes to realize, is forever linked to slaughter.
Cock. Directed by Marianne Elliott. Ambassadors Theater, through June 4.
Henry V. Directed by Max Webster. Donmar Warehouse, through April 9.
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