Theatre in Review: Old Cock (mala voadora/59E59)

	Jorge Andrade. Photo: Pedro Sardinha

I can hear you smirking at the title; indeed, the production begins with a recorded announcement welcoming us to Robert Schenkkan's Old Cock, followed by a pause for a laugh. To be clear, however, this is a work of political satire, its scalding observations wrapped in a thick coat of whimsy. Make that a feathered coat: Jorge Andrade, the sole cast member, spends the evening dressed as a rooster. Yep, a rooster.

And not just any old poultry: He is the Rooster of Barcelos, the hero of a popular Portuguese folktale about a cooked chicken, served on a platter at a prominent judge's dinner table. The jurist, eager for his meal, impatiently sentences to death a religious pilgrim wrongly accused of theft. Before he is hauled off to the gallows, the poor fellow announces, "As proof of my innocence, that roasted bird on your table will crow three times before I die!" And darn it if the rooster doesn't do just that -- sending the judge racing to prevent a miscarriage of justice.

Inspirational, no? But, in Old Cock, you get the rooster's side of the story. Or, as he notes, "My naked corpse is salted and stuffed with noxious weeds, an entire lemon is stuck up my ass, and I am roasted in a very hot oven for several hours." (If you find that hilarious, you'll be in clover at 59E59.) It's clear from the moment Andrade enters in his feathered finery -- a superb piece of work by costume designer Jose Capela -- and begs for applause, that we are in for a broad, in-your-face hour or so. Checking us out, he says, "But why am I here, my little chicks? Why here before you, instead of standing guard over those numerous souvenirs which your sunburnt and hungover tourist will eagerly stuff in their carry-on bag? Their carrion bag. Why am I not simply gracing the top of a Francesinha? Or lying battered and fried under Golden Arches? Therein, lies a tale." The whole text is like this passage - it's clever but grating; a cutesy, show-off piece of writing, evoking a kind of magic realism that tends to undermine Schenkkan's best points.

During the piece's first half, the rooster deconstructs his personal pious myth, noting the cruelties, masked in faith, of the Middle Ages, adding that, despite the absence of police in the story, "the need for Authority will always remain." As for himself, he notes, "I look terrible! Eviscerated. Boiled. Plucked. Roasted. And resurrected. But, OK, aside from that, I'm a symbol now of 'Faith and Justice.' So, I get a little 'restorative' work done from a very successful plastic surgeon, and then I do tours. Give speeches. Make appearances. Talk shows. My agents had me meeting with everybody." Then comes the bitter news that he can't participate in the profits from the proliferation of his image because he is already in the public domain. The nexus of media, entertainment, and religious is well-tilled territory and the points made here feel more than a little tired.

The action switches gears when the rooster engages in a dialogue with the video image of Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, Portugal's long-running dictator. "How is Heaven, excellency?" the Rooster inquires. "Surprisingly warm. Much like Tarrafal," he replies. "Your prison camp?" asks the Rooster. "Rehabilitation camp," is the euphemistic response. Tarrafal? One guesses the term means much to a Portuguese audience. Alas, Salazar is not a well-known figure here, possibly because his years in power roughly coincided with Spain's Franco, whose reign was much better reported (and satirized) in the American media. In any case, Salazar mostly exists to extend the play's argument, noting that he appropriated the Rooster for political purposes. His method was to "jazz it up a little and then combine it with that old, heart-tugging story of the innocent pilgrim saved from the gallows by a perambulating coq au vin, it was the perfect symbol for the new Portugal I was creating. Feisty and cute. Religious and servile." In Old Cock, any point worth making, is made twice. At least.

Andrade, who acts as his own director, is an energetic performer, but, as the Rooster, he is an off-putting one. (He is much better at excavating Salazar's hypocrisies and evasions.) The video design, by Um Segundo Filmes, is assured, especially the skips and breaks that signal the dictator is having a meltdown. The lighting designer Joao Fonte engineers a stunning entrance cue for The Rooster. Sergio Delgado's sound design works over the already exhausted idea of using Richard Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra for satiric ends. Overall, this entry in the Under the Radar Festival is a strange international hybrid, a piece by an eminent American playwright that seems designed for a local, non-American audience. However well it may play in Lisbon, it doesn't travel well --David Barbour