Past Reviews

Regional Reviews: St. Louis

The Cockfighter
West End Players Guild

Also see Richard's review of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner


Mark Abels, Benjamin Tracey, and John Reidy
We don't always get the coming-of-age we'd planned on.

In Frank Manley and Vincent Murphy's stoic tale, a champion cock fighter introduces his 12-year-old son to the lifestyle, with unexpected results. Cringe-inducing descriptions of animal abuse, contrasting with poetic and even gorgeous monologs from an uneasy wife (and from an unexpectedly delightful uncle) make for a gripping 90-minute play.

Renee Sevier-Monsey directs, holding her actors back to stern, American Gothic simplicity most of the time, although it only serves to make their dramatic monologs stand out even more. On one level, we learn a lot about fighting roosters, but on another, how men (and women) are caged and damaged by their own competing desires.

And maybe that makes the show even more powerful—we have to stare penetratingly into the actors' faces to squeeze any meaning out of them, by design. And when the father takes his son to the cock fighting contest, and all sorts of awful things happen, we've already focused in so tightly on this emotionally fossilized family, we are doubly affected when the violence finally jumps out.

Mark Abels is The Father, and in the style of the play, iconic labels are quite appropriate. Each character seems archetypal and stony, most of the time. He's as blank as a barnyard animal, and disdainfully primal. Mandy Berry is The Mother, worrying and hemmed-in by her husband, despite her embattled nurturing instincts.

She gets a rather stunning monolog about inner strength, though—remembering a strange church sermon about a fetus made of stone, and she grasps for a personal meaning in the parable. John Reidy (as The Uncle) is the one family member who could not consign himself to the army of living gravestones that makes up this rural community. And so he's become a local joke: an alcoholic, and someone of near-panhandler status.

But he also gets his own monolog, one that breaks him out of the grip of people like The Father, and Mr. Reidy grandly waltzes through that barroom speech in one of those rare spectacles that not only defines his great talent (and his director's), but which seems to open up an entirely perpendicular reality to The Cockfighter's inevitable test of manhood.

Benjamin Tracey is very good as The Boy, who is introduced to cock fighting in the course of the 90-minute story. He has one of those faces that could let him play 12 year olds for the next ten years, though he's got to be about six feet tall already. And his work is solid, steady, and meaningful throughout.

Professor Vincent Murphy of Emory University, co-author of the play along with the late Frank Manley, will be in St. Louis to attend the April 18 performance at the Union Avenue Christian Church, 733 Union Blvd., just north of Delmar. The final show is April 19, 2015. For more information visit www.westendplayersguild.org.

Cast of Characters
The Father: Mark Abels
The Mother: Mandy Berry
The Uncle: John Reidy
The Boy: Benjamin Tracey

Crew
Director: Renee Sevier-Monsey
Assistant Director/Stage Manager: Carrie Phinney
Set Design: Renee Sevier-Monsey
Sound Design: Mary Beth Winslow
Properties: Anna Blair
Graphic Design & Postcard: Marjorie Williamson
Box Office Manager: Danny Austin
House Manager: Carrie Phinney
Program: Sean Belt


Photo: John Lamb


-- Richard T. Green