Theatre in Review: Bull (59E59)If you like your theatre neat, nasty, and armed with a knockout punch, you should consider immersing yourself for an hour or so in the no-holds-barred world of Bull. Entering Stage B at 59E59, you can tell that playwright Mike Bartlett and his cast of four are spoiling for a fight: The room has been reconfigured by production designer Soutra Gilmour, with a boxing ring in the center and audience seating on two sides. (You can also stand around the ring, which I recommend; it gives you a front-row seat for some of the fiercest acting in town.) Bull is subtitled "The Bullfight Play," a fair-enough term for a drama in which an innocent is psychologically gored over and over, bringing him to a state of nervous collapse. Tony, Isobel, and Thomas, all hoping to receive an unspecified promotion in an unnamed company, are awaiting the arrival of their boss, Carter, who will make the final decision. All are dressed for the office, although Isobel wastes no time in commenting that Thomas' outfit looks cheap. After a brief verbal tussle, Thomas calls Isobel a bitch. Barely ruffled, Isobel takes him apart in 50 words or less, saying, "Hey. Hey. I'm just saying, since we're waiting, since we're making conversation best we can, I'm simply saying your suit isn't as great as you think it is. That's allowed. Expressing my opinion. Your suit, whether you like it or not, is a talking point. I'm not being a bitch. You should be grateful I was making conversation at all." Tony, an Olympic-level bully, tries to draw out Thomas, playing deft games of one-upmanship; learning that Thomas' father was a math teacher, Tony says that his parent is a "silver fox" of a surgeon. When Thomas says his father is dead, Tony asks, "What did he die of? Was it maths? 'Cause I hate maths." Clearly, Thomas, a tense, sweaty loser, is no match for Tony and Isobel, a pair of cool killing machines. Thomas tries to strike back, accusing Isobel of being "anal," and she, without missing a beat, informs him that she was sexually abused as a child. Thomas' attempt at challenging this remark is met with moral outrage from Isobel. Tony backs her up, leaving Thomas cornered and faintly guilty. Once again, it's checkmate. The action of Bull moves swiftly and surely as Tony and Isobel play their undermining games, toying with Thomas the way skilled matadors prepare their four-legged opponents for the kill. Isobel notes that Thomas is "very strangely proportioned." Tony and Isobel produce blue binders containing the sales figures that are required for their interviews with Carter and lament that Thomas has failed to prepare such a document. Isobel tries to put Thomas off guard by complaining about Tony's bestial treatment of women, but the identity of the evening's designated victim is crystal clear. Thomas is so addled by the others' mind games that he finds himself following through on a dare to put his face next to Tony's bare chest. The arrival of Carter -- who catches the two men in this bizarre tableau -- kicks the torturous fun and games up another notch: As he notes, "It's always difficult when faced with the need to downsize, when faced with the need to conduct a cull, if I can put it like that, which I think I can, in fact, I think that's quite a good word for what we're doing, it's a cull to save the species, by which I mean the rest of us, from extinction." Long before it reaches its climax, Bull has given us an appalling look inside a corporate world where the battle to get ahead becomes an end in itself, the players becoming addicted to the peculiar pleasures of psychological terror tactics. At one point, Tony makes reference to The Apprentice, and you might say that Bull is The Apprentice as Harold Pinter might have conceived it. Bartlett has Pinter's skill for turning everyday conversation into vicious combat. He also has Caryl Churchill's gimlet eye for corporations where employees are commodities and daily existence is like nature -- red in tooth and claw. (Carter's description of the company's treatment of redundant workers is hair-raisingly accurate.) Some of this may seem like old news, but thanks to Bartlett's taut, often bitterly funny dialogue and Clare Lizzimore's sharp-as-a-guillotine direction, Bull overflows with a bilious life of its own. The cast is excellent, with Adam James' hearty, bullying Tony a perfect match for Sam Troughton's Thomas, a panicky weakling who is doomed to lose because he has no zest for the game. Neil Stuke is especially convincing when showing us Carter's Darwinian view of the universe. First among equals is Eleanor Matsuura's Isobel, who is capable of striking multiple attitudes, each of them equally convincing, in a minute or less. Her self-possession is thoroughly chilling; never has a woman sounded less vulnerable when admitting to being sexually victimized. Peter Mumford's lighting casts a clinical fluorescent glow on the casually vicious proceedings. The fierce climactic showdown is accompanied by a nifty coup de théâtre, which surely requires extra work from the stage and wardrobe crew but which ends the action on a satisfyingly savage note. Bull is in many ways a mirror image of the drama by Bartlett that is euphemistically known as The Cockfight Play. In the latter, a man and a woman are basically held hostage by the vacillating young man they both love. In Bull, a man and a woman sadistically torment the vacillating young man for whom they both feel contempt. Both plays feature an older male character who shows up, about two-thirds of the way in, to guide the action to a climax. And both call for some kind of arena staging. If I prefer Bull (which was first produced in February at the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield, UK) it's because of the uncluttered language and stripped-down action. On the basis of these two plays, Bartlett is a talent to watch; he knows how to make a theatre hum with conflict.--David Barbour 
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