Cock: Royal Court Theatre, London
LIVING in a country where Gordon Brown has made dithering a political art form, a play involving vacillation strikes a familiar chord.
Despite the come-on title (anyone hoping for a flash or two will be disappointed), it is a brittle, cuttingly witty study of a man torn between his gay partner and the woman he has fallen in love with. Ben Whishaw, whose 2004 Hamlet was so memorable, is John, the nerve-racked young man caught in the paralysis of indecision.
He loves his partner M but is often the object of abuse. Mocking John's inability to cook or master DIY skills, M rails: "Your hands are like satellite dishes at the end of fishing rods."
He has a point. For much of the time in a play that swings between drama and comedy, Whishaw waves his hands around like a demented puppet. Then he grabs at his tousled hair, runs his fingers through it and behaves in a truly tormented manner.
Whishaw expresses, facially and with his body, the pain his character is experiencing. Above all, he presents a sad, if irritating, picture of tortured wavering. It is a gripping performance.
Andrew Scott gives M all the sarcastic passion of a rejected lover. He sneers at John's new sexual partner (his first time with a woman), claiming she probably has huge shoulders and looks like Ray Winstone. But petite, pretty Katherine Parkinson is sweet and tender as the girl (although with a steely intention to keep her new man).
Paul Jesson is suitably infuriating as M's pompous, interfering father.
Playwright Mike Bartlett has a sharp ear for dialogue and director James Macdonald keeps a tight grip on the dramatic flow. Unfortunately, Miriam Buether's theatre-in-theround set looks as if it came from Ikea.
And why must the scene changes be marked by a chime of the type heard in lifts reaching a floor? Those quibbles apart, this 90-minute work is gripping and superbly acted.
Box Office: Cock: Royal Court Theatre, London, 020 7565 5000, until December 19
VERDICT: 3/5