Oxfordshire playwright’s redundancy play has all the brutality of the bullring
Bull
at the Old Fire Station, Oxford
on January 25 and 26
Review by JON LEWIS
The Matadors vs the Door Mat
After Oxfordshire playwright Mike Bartlett’s visit to a bull fight in Mexico City he was inspired to write his 2013 play Bull where he dramatises a different type of cruelty. Instead of a matador enjoying the sport of killing a fierce animal, Bartlett sets his drama in an office where three employees are waiting for their line manager to make one of them redundant. Sally Woodcock’s taut hour-long Mesh Theatre Company production makes for uncomfortable viewing because it becomes very evident that the workplace can be every bit as dangerous as a bullring.
Thomas (Rob Ostlere) is a hardworking Hufflepuff whilst his supercilious, confident team leader Tony (Rilwan Abiola Owokoniran) and even more poisonous new, and sexy, colleague Isobel (Rebecca Blackstone) are most certainly Slytherins. Thomas, not Tom, as he constantly points out, puts in the hours but is uninspiring. He is dressed in a drab grey suit whereas Tony and Isobel in a show of office power politics, are smarter; they both wear a flash of red, as does their boss, the amoral Carter (Tim Frances). It’s a subtle warning that Thomas does not comprehend - they are the red rags to his bull.
The extent of his colleagues’ treachery ultimately becomes evident to Thomas, but pennies drop slowly. Tony and Isobel work like raptors to tear Thomas apart because in the Darwinian world of a struggling business, it’s the weakest employee who must lose their job. This is apparent to the audience who know more than Thomas about him being set up. The audience realises that Thomas’ fate is a foregone conclusion. For Carter it is an easy decision. It does not matter to him whether Tony was treated fairly or was bullied and lied to. He has one job to do and that is to fire the weakest link and thereby preserve his own position in the company.
Whilst most of the stories told to Thomas by Tony and Isobel turn out to be bull, Thomas transforms himself literally into a bull. Isobel invites him, broken and tired, to attack her whilst she sashays out of his way.
Brutal.
