The best theatre often has a shapeshifting quality, responding to changing contexts and events. So it is with Nic Green’s alternative party conference, made and performed with Laura Bradshaw and Rosana Cade. Hijacking the rhetoric of the 2014 Tory party conference, Cock and Bull was first performed on the eve of the general election in 2015. It has extra spark staged before an election held against a background of falling living standards and it’s hard not to see a mischievous ridiculing of Donald Trump’s cockiness, too.
Dressed in identical suits, their mouths and hands covered with gold paint, the trio strut around repeating phrases – in particular one about “hard-working families” – until words are rendered meaningless. You want to giggle at the absurdity, but as the paint smears and the language becomes exhausted and flayed, despair sets in. Gradually, that turns to something else, as the women strip away everything to reveal the emptiness beneath the suits, in the process rendering the politicians powerless.
Amid the high-spirited satire there are some exquisite moments, hewn from constant repetition and refrains, from the weariness of bodies glistening with the sweat of exertion, and from the passion of righteous anger. There is a sense of grief at the way the pursuit of political power destroys language, decency and trust and how we fall for golden promises that deliver nothing but dust.
• At Southbank Centre, London, until 30 April. Box office: 0844 847 9910.
