'Cockfight' tackles labels, communication

To begin with, the title of Mike Bartlett's play now making an impassioned local debut at Theater LaB Houston really isn't "The Cockfight Play." That's a discreetly euphemistic alternative that polite periodicals prefer, rather than the actual, in-your-face, four-letter title.

I wish Bartlett had chosen another title - not because of the inconvenience of all this preliminary explanation, but because his title misrepresents the play. It leads you to anticipate one of those calculated shock efforts - whereas what unfolds is a good deal more complex and intriguing, occasional bouts of outspoken sex talk notwithstanding. Of course, the provocative title has generated an aura of sensation that has clung to the play from its acclaimed 2009 premiere at London's Royal Court Theatre to its talked-about off-Broadway run in 2012. With a more subtle title, it mightn't have attracted nearly so much attention.

In essence, the play is the reversal of a scenario once popular on stage and screen: the long-married man who suddenly finds himself in love with another man, creating turmoil for all concerned.

In Bartlett's script, protagonist John takes a break from his longtime boyfriend (identified only as M) and finds himself attracted to a woman (W) - quite unexpectedly for a man who hitherto considered himself gay. Much as his boyfriend and girlfriend fight over him and plead their respective cases, John seems unable or unwilling to decide.

Finally, all three meet for dinner and a showdown. The boyfriend even invites his father (F) to help persuade John.

The play is less about sex than about the complicated games of identity and communication. As a character comments at one point, they do seem to be going in circles. The point seems to be that individual identity and the particular relationship are more important than any label - perhaps that relationships would fare better with no labels whatsoever. Yet Bartlett conveys the prickly, volatile aspects of human connection so convincingly that we wonder what it would take for any relationship to run smoothly. The dialogue is at its most potent when the characters are putting each other down: "You're not as good-looking as you think - you're lucky to have me." As John's indecisiveness grows ever more maddening, we wonder what there is about this character that makes him so desirable to M and W. After all, what kind of louse would reject the gift of a teddy bear?

Director Mark Adams delivers a spare, tight, volatile production. Without sets or even props, it maintains its go-for-broke energy from the start - convincing us above all that these are characters who live intensely, feel intensely and express themselves intensely.

Bobby Haworth invests John with genuine yearning and drive, conveying the irony of the self-centered individual who's greedy for involvement yet, in some essential way, eternally detached. As to the root of his indecision, the play leaves it an enigma.

Dain Geist's M simmers with anger, justifiably aggrieved - yet frankly, as John accuses, a bit of a pain in his persistent nagging and neediness.

Haley Hussey is pert and poised as W, the confident interloper. She seems to be walking a tightrope between restraint and recklessness. I appreciate that both writing and production allow her character more sense of dignity than the male sides of the triangle.

Steve Bullitt completes the team capably as F, conveying the doting dad's heartfelt sympathy for his betrayed son.

Whatever you want to call it, "The Cockfight Play" is a grabber, with just one significant flaw. It never invests its aggravating protagonist with the positive qualities that would explain M and W's determination to win him and share his life.