Theatre Reviews & Features {module ad_left_body}Written by Mike Bartlett and directed by James Macdonald, COCK will open Off-Broadway at The Duke on 42nd Street, a NEW 42nd STREET project, 229 West 42nd Street, on Thursday, May 17 and previews will begin Thursday, May 1.
COCK will be produced by Stuart Thompson, Jean Doumanian and the Royal Court Theatre following an acclaimed production at the Royal Court Theatre in London.
When John and his boyfriend take a break, the last thing he expects is to suddenly meet the woman of his dreams. Now he has a big choice to make.
MIKE BARTLETT (Playwright) Mike Bartlett’s previous plays include 13, recently seen at the National Theatre; Earthquakes in London for the Headlong/National Theatre; Love, Love, Love for Paines Plough and soon to be restaged for the Royal Court; Artefacts for Nabokov/Bush Theatre; Contractions and My Child for the Royal Court; and Chariots of Fire, which will be presented at London’s Hampstead Theatre from May 9 through June 16, 2012. His play COCK won the 2010 Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in An Affiliate Theatre.
JAMES MACDONALD (Director). Theatre: King Lear, The Book of Grace, Drunk Enough to Say I Love You (the Public Theater); Top Girls (Broadway/MTC); Dying City (Lincoln Center); A Number (New York Theatre Workshop); And No More Shall We Part (Hampstead Theatre); A Delicate Balance, Judgment Day, The Triumph of Love (Almeida); John Gabriel Borkman (Abbey Theatre Dublin/BAM); Cock, Drunk Enough to Say I Love You, Dying City, Fewer Emergencies, Lucky Dog, Blood, Blasted, 4.48 Psychosis [including European/US tours], Hard Fruit, Real Classy Affair, Cleansed, Bailegangaire, Harry and Me, Simpatico, Blasted, Peaches, Thyestes, The Terrible Voice of Satan (all for the Royal Court); Dido Queen of Carthage, The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other, Exiles (National Theatre); Glengarry Glen Ross (West End); Troilus und Cressida, Die Kopien (Berlin Schaubühne); 4.48 Psychose (Vienna Burgtheater); The Tempest, Roberto Zucco (Royal Shakespeare Company); Love’s Labour’s Lost, Richard II (Royal Exchange, Manchester); The Rivals (Nottingham Playhouse); The Crackwalker (Gate); The Seagull (Sheffield Crucible); Miss Julie (Oldham Coliseum); Juno and the Paycock, Ice Cream and Hot Fudge, Romeo and Juliet, Fool for Love, Savage/Love, Master Harold and the Boys (Contact Theatre); Prem (Battersea Arts Centre/Soho Poly). Opera: Eugene Onegin, Rigoletto (WNO); Die Zauberflöte (Garsington); Wolf Club Village, Night Banquet (Almeida Opera); Oedipus Rex, Survivor from Warsaw (Royal Exchange/Hallé); Lives of the Great Poisoners (Second Stride). Film: A Number for HBO/BBC. Associate Director of the Royal Court from 1992 - 2006. NESTA fellow 2003-6.
JASON BUTLER HARNER (M) returns to Off-Broadway fresh from completing the first season of “Alcatraz”on Fox where he plays Deputy Warden EB Tiller. New York audiences know him from his many theatre performances in town including last year's sold out run of Through A Glass Darkly (Atlantic Theatre), the Coast of Utopia (Broadway, Lincoln Center), Our Town (Barrow Street), Hedda Gabler (NYTW, OBIE Award), Orange Flower Water (Edge Theatre), The Paris Letter (Roundabout, Drama Desk nomination), and many others. Other notable theatrical productions include Lanford Wilson's Serenading Louie (Donmar Warehouse, West End) The Glass Menagerie (Kennedy Center), The Invention of Love (American premiere, A.C.T.), The Cherry Orchard (Mark Taper Forum), and Hamlet (Dallas Theatre Center, title role). On film, Harner was seen this year in the indie favorites Letters From the Big Man and the multi-award winning The Green, in which he starred as a high school teacher wrongly accused of inappropriate behavior with a student. Other films include the Oscar nominated Changeling, The Taking of Pelham 1, 2, 3, The Good Shepherd, Next, John Adams, and Jonathan Ames' The Extra Man. Television appearances include the forthcoming Aaron Sorkin HBO series “The Newsroom,” “The Good Wife, “CSI,” “Fringe,” “Chase,” and, of course, the “Law and Order” trilogy.
AMANDA QUAID (W). Broadway: Equus. Off-Broadway: Galileo opposite F. Murray Abraham (CSC), The Illusion (dir. Michael Mayer, Signature), world premiere of Ethan Coen’s Happy Hour (Atlantic), The Witch of Edmonton (Red Bull), Banished Children of Eve, Yeats Project (Irish Rep), world premiere of Christopher Durang’s Not a Creature Was Stirring (Flea). Regional: Vivie in Mrs. Warren’s Profession opposite Elizabeth Ashley (Shakespeare Theatre), Rosalind in As You Like It (Folger), Juliet in Romeo and Juliet (HVSF). Education: Vassar.
CORY MICHAEL SMITH (John) most recently originated the role of Elder Thomas in the World Premiere of Samuel D. Hunter's The Whale at Denver Center Theater Company, being produced this fall at Playwrights Horizons. Previous credits include the New York premiere of The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World (Playwrights Horizons/New York Theater Workshop), the World Premiere of A. Rey Pamatmat's Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them (35th Annual Humana Festival at Actors Theatre), and The Fantasticks (Repertory Theatre of St. Louis; Barrington Stage Company). He collaborated on The Huntsmen and Tales from Red Vienna (JAW Festival at Portland Center Stage), as well as developmental workshops for Yank! (dir. David Cromer).
COTTER SMITH (F). Broadway credits include the Tony Award nominated Best New Play Next Fall, Wendy Wasserstein’s An American Daughter, and Lanford Wilson’s Burn This. Other New York credits include Kin (Playwrights Horizons), Side Effects (MCC Theatre), Dreams of Flying Dreams of Falling (Atlantic Theatre), and the Vineyard Theatre productions of Paula Vogel’s Pulitzer Prize winning How I Learned To Drive and The Dying Gaul by Craig Lucas. He was a member of the Circle Repertory Company in New York for ten years and is a founding member of the Matrix Theatre Company in Los Angeles. He also co-starred with Judd Hirsch in the National Tour of the Tony Award winning play Art. His television and film work ranges from his debut as Robert Kennedy in the miniseries “Blood Feud” twenty-five years ago to his role as the President of the United States in X2: X-Men United. He received a Best Supporting Actor nomination at the MethodFest Independent Film Festival for his work in Lunatics, Lovers and Poets, and his most recent film role was for HBO in Barry Levinson’s You Don’t Know Jack, as a prosecutor attempting to convict the infamous Dr. Kevorkian, played by Al Pacino. He has appeared in over fifty television shows along the way, from the early days of “Hill Street Blues” to this season's “The Good Wife,” “Damages” and “Person of Interest.”
Tickets for COCK available by calling The Duke on 42nd Street Box Office at 646-223-3010 or online at www.Dukeon42.org Box office hours are: Tuesday-Fridays from 4:00 PM to 7:00 PM; Saturdays from 12:00 PM to 6:00 PM. Beginning May 1, box office hours are Tuesday-Fridays from 4:00 PM to 8:00 PM, Saturdays from 12:00 PM to 8:00 PM and Sundays from 1:00 PM to 7:00 PM.
The performance schedule is Tuesday through Friday at 8pm, Saturday at 2pm and 8pm, and Sunday at 3pm and 7pm.
For more information about COCK, visit www.CockfightPlay.com.
About the organization: The New 42nd Street
Founded in 1990, The New 42nd Street is an independent, nonprofit organization charged with long-term responsibility for seven historic theaters on 42nd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. In addition to running The New Victory Theater, The New 42nd Street built and operates the NEW 42ND STREET® Studios a ten-story building of rehearsal studios, offices and a 199-seat theater named The Duke on 42nd Street for national and international performing arts companies. Since its opening on June 21, 2000, the NEW 42ND STREET Studios has been fully occupied by both nonprofit and commercial theater, dance and opera companies. With these institutions and the other properties under its guardianship, The New 42nd Street plays a pivotal role in fostering the continued revival of this famous street at the Crossroads of the World.
About the theater: The Duke on 42nd Street
The Duke on 42nd Street is an intimate 199-seat black box theater built and operated by The New 42nd Street. Since opening in 2000, the theater has been available on a rental basis to international and domestic nonprofit organizations to present their work. Companies that have presented at The Duke on 42nd Street theater include: Theatre for a New Audience; Playwrights Horizons; Lincoln Center Great Performers; The NYC Tap Festival; and 92nd Street Y’s Harkness Dance Project. In October 2008, Lincoln Center Theater launched “LCT3” at The Duke on 42nd Street. NEW 42ND STREET presentations at The Duke on 42nd Street have included: Karole Amitage’s Armitage Gone! Dance; Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s Rose Rage; Naked Angels and Dan Klores’s Armed and Naked in America; and Classical Theater of Harlem’s production of Langston Hughes’s Black Nativity. Notable NEW VICTORY® presentations at The Duke on 42nd Street include Joan McLeod’s The Shape of a Girl, Steppenwolf Theater Company’s The Bluest Eye and the smash hit, Once and For All We’re Gonna Tell You Who We Are So Shut Up and Listen, presented by The New Victory Theater in cooperation with The Under the Radar Festival.
# # #
