Edinburgh review: Cock and Bull (Forest Fringe)
Politicians – they all sound the same; can’t be trusted; promise the world and never deliver; look after their own at our expense. A furious, feminist take-down of the political establishment, Nic Green‘s Cock and Bull is a physical manifestation of empty rhetoric and its effects. This isn’t a reasoned response or a clever counter-argument – too late for that, too easily brushed off. Instead, Cock and Bull ridicules and rails.
Three women stand before us in three dark suits. Their shoes are polished, their ties well-tied. Their lips and hands are gold. Like Winnie the Pooh after a night on the honey, it’s like they’ve been guzzling molten metal. They catch the light, gestures glimmering – just that bit more visible – and they seem like statues, icons even: the implacable, immovable establishment – all white, all male, all the same.
Out of their mouths come familiar phrases – political soundbites from the last few years: Do up your tie; Fix the roof; Pumps me up. One, in particular, sticks: "Hard-working people; people who work hard." It becomes a beat poem, a choral round, a rhythm that repeats and repeats – not unlike a Philip Glass score – until all that remains is mechanical, regimented beat, the sort that keeps workers in time.
As the women move, the paint starts to smear. When they shake our hands, it rubs off on us. It stains the clothes they remove and, as sweat trickles down their faces, it starts to run, fading to a dirty smudge: gold into grime. The distance between words and actions, between politicians talking hard-work and bodies working hard, is plain to see.
Repetition is everything in Cock and Bull. It breaks down words and wears down bodies. Just as in politics, the phrases drill into your brain. They lose their meaning and we stop listening. What’s left is a tongue-twister, and it starts to distort: hard-working-har-dwerking-our-twerking; peo-ple-pee-pol-peep-hole. The suits are off now; women’s bodies on show – naked, sweaty, knackered. "Good luck everyone" twists out of shape; "Good look, everyone?"
It’s excoriating stuff; a battering ram against the political establishment, all cock and all bull. For all its fury and exhaustion, it’s also cathartic: a show that sweats out the toxins of divisive austerity. A blistering, beautiful act.
Cock and Bull runs as part of Forest Fringe at Out of the Blue Drill Hall until 14 August.
