Reviews Sheffield Published 12 February 2013

Bull

Crucible Studio ⋄ 6th - 23rd February 2013

Battle royale.

John Murphy

It’s difficult not to think of Mike Bartlett’s Bull as anything but a companion piece to his Cock; there’s that title of course, but there’s more to it than that and both plays have a similar design, a stark, simple ring, an arena of sorts, around which a large proportion of the audience stand, the sweat and meat and heat of the play right in their faces, as if at a boxing match – or cock fight. Yet where Cock took one man’s struggle with his sexuality as its subject matter, Bull tackles the world of office politics – and in doing so makes the battle metaphor even more explicit.

Bartlett – as proven repeatedly in Earthquakes In London, Cock and the brilliant Love Love Love – is a writer with a startling breadth of ambition coupled with an ear for dialogue unmatched by many of his contemporaries. It is something of a coup for Sheffield Theatres to be staging the world premiere of his latest play.

In an age of triple-dip recessions and ever-growing unemployment, Bull taps into something incredibly relevant and potent. The plot is a simple one: three colleagues are applying for two jobs, which means that one person will inevitably be leaving the company. It’s brutally obvious from the outset who that person will be (the downtrodden, neurotic Thomas), and who the winners will be (the strutting, confident Isobel and Tony): the drama comes in discovering just exactly how Thomas will experience his downfall.

And it’s certainly not pretty. Although Bull is only 50 minutes long, it’s impossibly intense and, by the end, you feel like you’ve just gone 12 rounds with Thomas, Tony and Isobel. The three performances are all superb: Sam Troughton is spot on as the panic-stricken Thomas, his entire body seemingly taken over by nerves and self-doubt, while Adam James and Eleanor Matsuura are both magnificently malevolent (although never cartoonishy so; they are both – frighteningly – people who you could imagine populating any normal office space) as the two ‘alpha-dogs’, forensically whittling away at Thomas’ self-confidence.

Their taunts begin as seemingly good-natured ‘office banter’ before gradually descending into something much darker, until – in the last ten minutes, the home stretch – the play becomes genuinely quite hard to watch. As with a boxing match, there is a compulsion to keep watching and the sight of Matsuura strutting around an increasingly frantic Thomas is undeniably magnetic. There’s also a bravura piece of stage direction (far too good to spoil here) which provides the production with a suitably bleak yet realistic climax.

Bull is a short, sharp shock of a play; one with which it’s, scarily, all too easy to identify. Claire Lizzimore’s direction is fast-paced and she choreographs the performers incredibly well, injecting a real sense of unease into proceedings. This unease is heightened by Soutra Gilmour’s design: by placing the audience around and above the ‘ring’, it  creates a sense of voyeurism, making the audience feel all the more complicit in Thomas’ downfall. Indeed, part of the pleasure of the production is to look at the other faces around the stage, especially towards the end of the piece: the same people who were chuckling at the earlier barbs were looking down at their feet with an increasingly troubled expression on their faces.

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John Murphy

John is the former editor of, and current contributor to, musicOMH. He lives in Sheffield, in the shadow of the famous Crucible and Lyceum theatres, and also reviews in nearby Leeds and Manchester. John is also a huge fan of stand-up comedy, and can be often be found in one of Sheffield's comedy clubs, laughing like a madman.

Bull Show Info


Produced by Sheffield Theatres

Directed by Claire Lizzimore

Written by Mike Bartlett

Cast includes Sam Troughton, Adam James, Eleanor Matsuura, Adrian Lukis

Link http://sheffieldtheatres.co.uk/

Running Time 50 mins (no interval)

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