Review: ‘Cock’ at The Duke on 42nd Street (NYC)

A play with the provocative title Cock is going to raise eyebrows (especially when the marquee outside the Duke on 42nd Street spells it out).  The provided plot description makes it even more appealing: “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.”

Based on that description, it would seem like John (Cory Michael Smith) would be the central focus of the play’s story, and in some regards he is.  But once the set-up behind John’s unqiue predicament is established, boyfriend M (Jason Butler Harner), and girlfriend W (Amanda Quaid) take the lead by talking to and about John rather than with him, he sits or lies down in total frustration at not knowing what he truly wants.  It makes it even more difficult when M’s father, F (Cotter Smith) arrives and begins to advise John from his perspective as both a concerned father and a supporter of gay rights.  That ultimatum — that John has to choose to be with a man or a woman — actually flies in the face of the whole idea of F’s insistence that it is okay for him to be whoever he is, since John doesn’t want to make a choice but finds himself forced to choose between the one(s) he loves on criteria that isn’t as simple as whom he loves more.  Read more