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MOST POPULAR LINKS... FRONT PAGE... MONTHLY DRINKS NIGHT
COCKFIGHT
Verdict: Dark camp comedy
London - Canal Café Theatre - 10, 16, 17 August 02
Roman's in deep shit. Loan shark Solomon wants his money - fast. Worse, Roman's sister Cassandra is coming to stay. With only gay mate Vincent to help him, can Roman win the desperate battle to survive?
Roman's a conundrum. Is he gay, as Vincent - played with verve and hilarity by Andrew Haslam camping for England - would fancy? Or straight, as matchmaking and scheming Cassandra - in Alison Edmunds's splendidly disapproving performance - might prefer? Playwright Andrew Doyle tips the balance this way and that - though Roman's idolisation of Chakka Khan is a weighty clue.
And what about Cassandra? Is she the butter's-OK-in-my-mouth prude who dislikes everyone from cripples (imperfect) to the working classes (fat)? Or does she hold a surprising secret?
Vincent is sympathetic - he has a sister too, and today's her Bat Mitzvah. He's avoiding her and it by equiping Roman with ripostes to Cassandra's assaults on his privacy, his untidyness (and what Cassandra fears is Roman's conversion from Judaism to Popery - which fortunately turns out to have been her mis-hearing of 'pot-pourri') - and his dog.
It has to be said that this is not a play for dog-lovers. Unless you like your dog wrapped in a bin-liner and disposed of at the abbatoir at which Vincent conveniently works. But these boys certainly know how to make a neat canine parcel.
Cockfight is - on one level - an everyday story of gay Jewish folk and their sisters. Though not one that might win the approval (in the land that gave Sodomy its capital city) of Jerusalem's Deputy Mayor Rabbi Haim Miller, who recently denounced Jerusalem's Gay Pride March on 7 June 02 to the BBC in the following words: "I think they have a problem, they have a perversion, it is a disgrace. Before, you would be ashamed of this. A person who had this problem used to hide in the street. Today they want to go out into the city streets and call it 'pride'." Way to go, Rabbi.
On another it's a comedy unafraid to be intellectual in its wit and superb writing. On another still, it's a disturbing piece of dark storytelling.
Andrew Doyle (Roman) and Alison Edmunds (Cassandra) rivet attention with their shrewd interpretation of a fraught brother and sister relationship. Edmunds shows a gifted range, convincing as the sister all brothers might recognise, then moving the character between spitting disdain, approval-seeking, and cold hatred. Doyle's variously vexed, resigned, and chillingly afraid. Andrew Haslam (Vincent) inhabits the stage as if at home, blissfully at ease in his character and by turns funny, inspiring and conspiratorial - the kind of unreliable best friend everyone wants - but not necessarily in an emergency.
Director Louis Brownhill keeps the stage alive with a well-chosen set and a lively focus on the separate relationships between the characters. He's aware of, and makes us aware of, the subtleties of each pairing: his interpretations of the sister-brother and best mates dynamics are honest and accurate. He has a firm grasp of the overall story, and delivers it with emphasis in all the right places. Writer Andrew Doyle's achieved an excellently layered script. On the outside, sugar-coated farce. Within, a steel trap waiting to be sprung as a secret's unlocked and the play moves to its climax. Moral - boys - never open a girl's handbag.
Voice of Solomon by Richard Aloi. Technicals: light and sound executed with elan by Rupert Lally. Costumes and photography by Julie Ruck. Produced by Fat Beast Productions.
END
John Park
reviewed at Canal Café Theatre / Friday 9 August 2002
related topic - our review of Shamlet
Fringe Report (c) Fringe Report 2002-2010
