Review Roundup: COCK Starring Taron Egerton, Jonathan Bailey, Jade Anouka & Phil Daniels

Read reviews for C O C K at the Ambassadors Theatre - Mike Bartlett's Olivier award winning play about love and identity.

Directed by Tony and Olivier award winning Marianne Elliott, COCK will run until Saturday 4 June 2022.

"The fact is that some of us like women and some like men and that's fine that's good in fact that's good, a good thing, but it seems to me that you've become confused."

In a world full of endless possibilities why must we still limit ourselves with labels?

Taron Egerton, Jonathan Bailey, Jade Anouka and Phil Daniels star in Mike Bartlett's razor sharp play which redefines the battle of the sexes.

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Marianka Swain, BroadwayWorld: The play is designed to be combative - a cockfight. It's jam-packed with conflicts, from the bickering of long-term partners to raging jealousies. It becomes somewhat exhausting over the straight-through hour and 45 minutes, and a more nuanced reading of both characters and issues is sacrificed for the viciously funny punchlines.

Sarah Crompton, WhatsOnStage: It's all terrifically clever and never dull as it unfolds over an unbroken hour and 45 minutes. But it is quite chilly. What saves the night are the performances. It says a lot about Bailey's appeal in Bridgerton and the impact Egerton has made in Kingsman and Rocketman that audiences are queuing round the block for the play.

Arifa Akbar, The Guardian: Bartlett's dialogue still zings in its best moments and richly explores passion, relationship choices, cowardice and commitment. But the central angst-ridden axis of the play - the question of whether sexual identity is fixed and genetic or on a sliding scale in which choice comes into play - seems less of a conundrum these days.

Clive Davis, The Times: Bartlett's would-be risqué dialogue often sounds like a clumsy translation from a bad French comedy. In Marianne Elliott's production, perched on Merle Hensel's minimalist set, everything is overbright and overemphatic.

Aleks Sierz, The Arts Desk: With its sharp dialogues, often familiar enough to any couple, and laugh-aloud jokes, its moments of transgressive honesty and explicit sexuality, this is an entertainment that is lit up by the excellence of its acting. Jonathan Bridgerton Bailey's John expresses his fumbling indecision with a range of facial grimaces, conveying his character's fears perhaps more successfully than his occasional tenderness. His palpable awkwardness and moments of anguish often result in a rictus which sums up his inability to make a decision. In comparison, Taron Egerton's M is cooler, his ironic attitude to his lover's procrastinations and over-thinking often amusingly acute. His attitude is so persuasive that you are tempted to side with him in this sex war.

Dominic Cavendish, The Telegraph: Presented against a curved back wall of burnished metal with fluorescent-effect rods dangling from on high, the production projects modish style without attaining the searing intensity of the original cockpit staging. And while the script has broadly kept pace with the times, liberalism's leaps and bounds have lent a sepia tinge to its focus on bisexuality, even if it still strikes a valid blow for unconstrained self-definition. (NB: everyone remains clothed and sex is teasingly implied.) All in all, it still measures up, but the super-talented Bartlett - the original magic Mike perhaps - went on to bigger and better things and is girding his loins for two premieres in the coming weeks.

Natasha Tripney, The Stage: While it works on its own terms, it's a difficult play to watch without an awareness of what it omits. While bisexuality is mentioned, it's done so in a throwaway fashion with a faint expression of distaste. John describes his identity as a "stew". And yet the play suggests there are only two possible outcomes to his dilemma, which makes it feel more dated than it is. The narrative is driven by John's fluidity and yet recoils from it (something that also anchors it in time). Despite the best efforts of the cast, the characters always feel primarily like sexual chess pieces engaged in a game in which there can be only one victor.

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