Review by John Lombard
Cockfight is theatre of absurd one-upmanship, where a battle for a job can be decided by who can munch and swallow the most office paper.
This physical theatre by company The Farm parodies office life by amplifying the everyday frustrations of desk life into absurd scenarios.
Gavin Webber plays a successful but deranged office worker, while Joshua Thomson is the motivated new employee. The pair establish the new pecking order through a highly petty campaign of peacocking and feather ruffling.
For instance, in one sequence they battle over the arrangement of objects on a desk, eventually swapping objects around so quickly the action resembles the rapid flurry of three-card monte. In another sequence, filing documents quickly becomes a game of competitive basketball.
What unites all of the parts of this genre-blending work is an interest in finding and unleashing restrained impulses: perhaps we have all felt like bashing a filing cabinet with a chair, but this piece shows what might happen if we actually did it.
When the pair launch into an elaborate pas-de-deux, it is not a pointless detour, but the unwanted intimacy of cubicle slavery exploding into physical form.
Strangely for a piece that depends so strongly on mime, it is not entirely silent, but has splotches of awkward, hesitant dialogue. While this dialogue delivered some metaphors that the audience could use to guide interpretation of the piece, more often it burst the magic of the physical comedy.
The performance ultimately becomes strangely moving, as the paternity of this generational battle is explored: in one surreal but touching sequence, the pair’s neckties get tied together, and they flop around the stage while Cat Stevens’ ‘Father and Son’ plays.
Cockfight is barking mad, a slapstick comedy that draws frantic energy from modern dance. A unique experience, and one to relish.
