More aggravating workplace problems are explored in Mike Bartlett's Bull, in which three characters in a nameless office fight over two jobs. The Young Vic's production, directed by Claire Lizzimore, blends the competitive aggression of TV's The Apprentice with a Darwinian view of the office as place where the weak are trampled underfoot. Bartlett often takes a metaphysical "what if?" and applies it to familiar circumstances. Earthquakes in London gave us a family struggling to adjust to the gloomy predictions of their climate-scientist dad. King Charles III poked fun at the royals in iambic pentameter and asked us what might happen if king and parliament ended up on different sides, nearly four centuries on from the last big quarrel.
Bull is a less whimsical offer, exploring the line between bullying and banter. Sam Troughton plays Thomas, the human bull at the mercy of the matador team leader Tony (Adam Jones) and accompanying harpy Isobel (Eleanor Matsuura). Lanky and uncertain, Thomas is systematically destroyed by Isobel and Tony. Quite a lot of this rings true and the ambiguities of how we feel about bullying in theory and what we practise when we can get away with it are wince-inducing. Bartlett told me in an interview that he had written about bullying because he had both been on the receiving end of it and fallen into dishing it out, under the comforting disguise of banter or teasing.
Alas, the play is undermined by two lazy tropes. One is the casting of Thomas as "comp boy done good" while Tony brims with assured privilege. That loading of the dice feels slick and deterministic. It is possible to go to state school, get a job and do well in Britain. The bigger flaw is that the play takes no account at all of the spread of anti-bullying legislation, nor indeed any presence of employment law. It feels like something written in the Caryl Churchill vein of critique during the Thatcher years. Today, as the unions' negotiating power has waned, the charge of bullying is one that is frequently raised to challenge employers. Missing out all of that leaves Bull more tumultuous than credible.
Finally, the unpredictable Trafalgar Studios has served up a miniature treat in Boa (as in constrictor and feather), a two-handed play starring Harriet Walter and her real-life husband Guy Paul. It excavates a fractious marriage between a disappointed, frequently drunk dancer and a once-brilliant war correspondent. Written by the up-and-coming Clara Brennan, the story is one of those tributes to enduring, irksome married love that hides nothing about the insecurities of the participants. As Boa, Walter is an edgy, physically needy wife, while Paul (a Broadway stalwart) ably captures the mixture of languid pride and rootlessness in a once-fêted journalist contemplating life beyond awards and adrenalin. The two of them act their socks off for a straight 90 minutes. It runs till March 7 in a tiny studio. Perhaps Mr and Mrs Walter have concluded that, like Richard Burton and Liz Taylor, playing opposite one another for much longer might doom their home life. They reunite for Death of a Salesman at the Royal Shakespeare Company shortly after, and on this form it's worth a trip to Stratford to see how they survive that.
Bull is a less whimsical offer, exploring the line between bullying and banter. Sam Troughton plays Thomas, the human bull at the mercy of the matador team leader Tony (Adam Jones) and accompanying harpy Isobel (Eleanor Matsuura). Lanky and uncertain, Thomas is systematically destroyed by Isobel and Tony. Quite a lot of this rings true and the ambiguities of how we feel about bullying in theory and what we practise when we can get away with it are wince-inducing. Bartlett told me in an interview that he had written about bullying because he had both been on the receiving end of it and fallen into dishing it out, under the comforting disguise of banter or teasing.
Alas, the play is undermined by two lazy tropes. One is the casting of Thomas as "comp boy done good" while Tony brims with assured privilege. That loading of the dice feels slick and deterministic. It is possible to go to state school, get a job and do well in Britain. The bigger flaw is that the play takes no account at all of the spread of anti-bullying legislation, nor indeed any presence of employment law. It feels like something written in the Caryl Churchill vein of critique during the Thatcher years. Today, as the unions' negotiating power has waned, the charge of bullying is one that is frequently raised to challenge employers. Missing out all of that leaves Bull more tumultuous than credible.
Finally, the unpredictable Trafalgar Studios has served up a miniature treat in Boa (as in constrictor and feather), a two-handed play starring Harriet Walter and her real-life husband Guy Paul. It excavates a fractious marriage between a disappointed, frequently drunk dancer and a once-brilliant war correspondent. Written by the up-and-coming Clara Brennan, the story is one of those tributes to enduring, irksome married love that hides nothing about the insecurities of the participants. As Boa, Walter is an edgy, physically needy wife, while Paul (a Broadway stalwart) ably captures the mixture of languid pride and rootlessness in a once-fêted journalist contemplating life beyond awards and adrenalin. The two of them act their socks off for a straight 90 minutes. It runs till March 7 in a tiny studio. Perhaps Mr and Mrs Walter have concluded that, like Richard Burton and Liz Taylor, playing opposite one another for much longer might doom their home life. They reunite for Death of a Salesman at the Royal Shakespeare Company shortly after, and on this form it's worth a trip to Stratford to see how they survive that.
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