Gil Pepper works at McDonald’s, lives with his abusive mother and is looked down upon by his co-worker, Phillipa, and one particularly odious local, Dickie Thimble, who stages cock fights. Gil is desperate to be seen in a better light, to rise above his low status inside the fast-food machine and win the respect of one-and-all by entering his trained rooster in one of Dickie’s fights.
Trans
playwright, Olivia Dufault, describes Year of the Rooster as a Greek
tragedy and she lays in references to The Odyssey and Oedipus and ties it all
back to the inventors of cockfighting (and democracy!) in her absurdist comedy
about the hubris of men.
While playing
with those classic theatrical tropes, Dufault’s play is more clearly a
commentary on consumerism and capitalism in America and the slow erosion of society
by the manosphere and toxic masculinity. Yes, Gil is undone by his fatal flaw –
trying to prove himself better than all the men in his small town, but tragedy usually feels tragic. This plays like a deserved comeuppance.
More central to the play – and the audience’s experience of the story, is the central character of Gil’s fighting rooster, Odysseus Rex. Performer Zack Pidd brings this character to charming life, dressed in Dan Barber’s incredible costume that is all musculature with a ruffled comb of hair on the top of Odysseus’ head. He also wears a pair of red speedos across which is embroidered the word COCK.
Barber’s
set and costumes create an ugly fairytale world of miscreants, trapped in a
(cock-) ring they cannot escape. Gil’s Macca’s uniform is faded and sickly. His
go-get-‘em colleague, Phillipa, struts around in heels with padded breasts, bum
and out-sized space buns that look like Mickey Mouse ears – perfect, since she
dreams of working at Walt Disney World Resort one day.
Mum is
stuck in a chair, covered by knick knacks, under an unkempt mountain of hair that
threatens to topple her any minute. Dickie is permanently clad in a sparkly
white suit and slicked back hair – a kind of shadow-universe Elvis, who has no
talents of his own, so he turns to animal cruelty to make money.
Spinning
Plates concludes its Beast Trilogy, following its Green Room Award-winning
production of The Crocodile in 2023 and its production of Ionesco’s Rhinoceros
in 2024. As inventive as those productions were, Year of the Rooster
dials the absurdism and camp up several notches and doesn’t even pretend to
harken to reality. The play’s criticisms of capitalist America is clear enough,
without resorting to problematic depictions of lower-class people struggling to
make ends meet.
Pidd’s
performance as the buff rooster is delicious, his over-the-top bravado in challenging
everything – including the sun – is hilarious. He moves like a rooster only on
occasion, with clucks and chirps kept to an absolute minimum. Jessica Stanley
gives us a pathetic Gil that you want to feel sorry for, but without engendering
the character with much to like. Natasha Herbert’s mother is a rotten creature,
clinging onto her nearly-dead dog with more affection than she shows for her
son. James Cerche gets to impress with both Dickie and his prize fighter, Bat-Dolphin
– a black-feathered master who fights Odysseus at the climax of act one. AYA
brings an intense comic performance as Phillipa, an oddball creation – an enemy
of Gil who slowly learns to come around to him. The performer also appears
later as a kind-of prize for Odysseus, in a scene that made me particularly uncomfortable.
Director
Alexandra Aldrich keeps the satire front-of-mind and helps to strike a beautiful
balance between a play that wants to say a lot while also being fully
ridiculous. In other productions, the central cock fight is often played with heightened
violence; here, it is crafted to hit hilarious heights.
Spinning
Plates has a winner on their hands. Year of the Rooster is light on its
feet, while spitting comical rejoinders and landing side-splitting blows. It’s silly,
but it’s also a knock-out.
- Keith Gow, Theatre First
Year of
the Rooster is
playing at Fortyfive Downstairs until March 22
Photos: Cameron Grant
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