Review: Cock (COLAB Tower)

Review by Sam Woodward

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Finding COLAB Tower, a contemporary theatre space tucked away near Southwark Bridge, feels like the first stage of the evening’s immersion. It is not the sort of venue you stumble into by accident, and there is something pleasingly secretive about the journey inside. The welcome is warm, the bar relaxed, and before you have had time to settle into the usual rhythms of a press night, you are led through a sequence of back rooms and narrow staircases into a small performance area where the production already seems to be in motion. There is no glossy programme pause, no comfortable pre-show chatter, no chance to sit back and take a photo. Instead, you are placed directly into a tense little arena, with actors already among you and the air thick with confrontation.

It is a fitting entrance for Mike Bartlett’s Cock, a play built around exposure, desire and the impossibility of remaining neutral. First performed in 2009, and more recently revived in the West End, Bartlett’s play centres on John, who has been in a steady relationship with his boyfriend, M, for several years. When he unexpectedly falls in love with a woman, W, he is forced into a choice that unsettles not only his relationship but his understanding of himself. In Talk Is Free Theatre’s production, directed by Dylan Trowbridge, the piece is staged with striking simplicity: a tight circle of seats, sparse visual framing, and performers held in close proximity as love becomes something closer to combat.

There is no denying the strength of the set-up. John’s situation is immediately compelling: a man who has understood himself and been understood by others in one way suddenly finds that certainty disrupted. Bartlett avoids turning this into a neat argument about sexuality, which is one of the play’s more interesting choices. John is not searching for the right label so much as hiding from the consequences of making a decision. That gives the play its best tension, particularly in the early scenes between John and W, where attraction arrives awkwardly, unexpectedly and with real comic charge. The writing is at its strongest here, catching the strange thrill of being seen differently by someone new.

Yet as the play develops, that initial spark does not always deepen. For all the sharpness of Bartlett’s premise, the writing can feel oddly static, returning again and again to the same emotional positions. John’s indecision is dramatically rich in theory, but after over 90 minutes, it begins to feel more repetitive than revealing. There are flashes of wit and brutality, and moments where the play seems ready to become something genuinely devastating, but it never quite pushed me there. It flirts with emotional ruin, then seems to lose its nerve just as things are getting interesting. Instead of feeling immersed, I found myself admiring the shape of the argument from a distance rather than feeling fully caught inside it.

What Trowbridge’s staging does achieve is a sustained sense of exposure. The closeness of the room means there is very little space for emotional privacy, and the actors’ proximity to the audience makes each shift in feeling uncomfortably public. We are not simply watching John’s uncertainty unfold from a safe distance; we are seated around it, implicated in the awkwardness of his silences and the cruelty of his evasions. One of the production’s cleverest visual moments comes through its use of shadow, briefly enlarging the emotional conflict beyond the bodies in the room and suggesting how distorted these relationships have become. It is a striking image, though one the production might have capitalised on more fully. If the writing sometimes struggles to escalate, the staging at least keeps the pressure visibly present.

It is the cast who keep the production at its most alive. Aidan deSalaiz has the difficult task of holding the centre as John, a character defined by indecision, and he captures both the vulnerability and the maddening evasiveness of a man who wants freedom without choice. Around him, Michael Torontow and Tess Benger create the evening’s strongest emotional pull, not simply as opposing options but as two people trying, in very different ways, to make John say something true. Torontow’s M is wounded and controlling, yet never without tenderness, while Benger is excellent as W, bringing a warmth and directness that makes her relationship with John feel genuinely possible. When Kevin Bundy arrives as F, he shifts the rhythm of the evening, bringing a welcome flash of humour before revealing the more complicated compromises of a father trying to stand by his son.

For all the strength of those performances, the production never quite becomes as affecting as it should. There are moments where John’s inability to choose seems ready to become a genuine fatal flaw, pushing the play towards something darker and more devastating. Instead, the drama remains caught in a loop. By the end, John and M are left much as they began: together, unhappy, and locked in a dynamic neither seems able to escape. That circularity may be part of Bartlett’s point, but it also limits the play’s emotional force. Rather than feeling shaken by the lack of resolution, I was left wanting a greater sense of movement, consequence or change. For all its intimacy, Cock does not get under the skin as deeply as it should. It is full of promise, but perhaps not quite the explosive climax one might hope for.

Cock plays at COLAB Tower until 2nd May. Tickets from: https://tickets.colabtheatre.co.uk/event/65916?date=2026-04