This article contains spoiler content.
Allow me to quote from the synopsis of Maisie Bayliss and Mia Lee’s production of Bull: “Bullying, bullfighting or bullshit? The situation is simple: Two will stay, one will go. Grab ringside seats as three employees battle to keep their jobs.” This summary is technically accurate. In its purest form, Mike Bartlett’s Bull is a play about three workers at an unspecified company – Tony (Lucas Everett), Isobel (Mia Barnett), and Thomas (Charlie Dix) – one of whom is set to be fired by their boss, Carter (Harry Wopat).
But the thing is, it’s not really about that, is it? That synopsis implies mystery and intrigue, a play built around the suspense of which employee will be laid off, and perhaps most of all, a contest of equals. In reality, the conclusion is so foregone that even the show’s own poster practically tells you that Thomas will lose. From the second he paces nervously onstage, with his ugly, oversized suit and unkempt hair, it’s so, so obvious that the mediocre man we are presented with is going to lose his job, and cruelly, this expectation is never subverted.
So instead, Bull is a play about bullying – a twisted, horrible game where Tony and Isobel gang up on Thomas for no real reason beyond sadistic pleasure. They don’t need to do it to him; they don’t have to throw him off any more than they already have. They could win easily even if all three of them sat in silence until Carter arrived. But they do it anyway. They try to come up with some kind of justification – Isobel theorises that it’s evolutionary, that she can sense that Thomas is the weakest in the group and so tries to get him fired for her own safety – but these are just excuses.
Taunting him about his choice of suit, his lack of preparedness, a non-existent stain on his face, his demeanour, his lack of a girlfriend, his birthplace, his father’s job, his gullibility, his not drinking, his social isolation, his education, and on and on and on. It’s completely relentless, and honestly quite difficult to watch. And yet it’s also surprisingly funny, with some lines being drenched in a deliciously cruel wit and other scenes, such as the one where Isobel accuses Thomas of lying about his mother’s Alzheimer’s after he had done the same about her parental abuse, almost forcing nervous laughter.
Designer Isla Campbell appropriately stages the production in the round, with ropes to evoke a boxing ring and nothing more than a central water cooler and two stools in opposite corners to denote an office. It’s a sparse set, but it allows the actors a lot of freedom to move around while still managing to feel uncomfortably cramped, which only heightens the play’s atmosphere. Much credit must also be given to the directors for blocking the play without favouring one side of the audience, which is difficult to do when staging productions in the round.
The performances are all superb, each actor playing perfectly off the others and breathing life into a demanding script. Mia Barnett embodies the hyper-capitalist girlboss, performing femininity through slinking around the stage in a short dress while rending Thomas to shreds. Lucas Everett, too, projects an obnoxious and yet strangely charismatic confidence that the privileged, attractive Tony turns on and off like a light switch. The character pivots from superficial sympathy to brutal mocking constantly, and you feel it each and every time Everett drops the façade.
For how sadly brief as his time onstage is, Harry Wopat also leaves a lasting impression – louder and more arrogant than the other two, he, unlike Isobel and Tony, makes no pretensions to civility around Thomas (or ‘Tom’, as he insists on calling him). He is brutally honest in a way that is almost refreshing, and ruthlessly berates Thomas to his face, which Wopat sells wonderfully with his booming voice and irritating swagger.
But the show-stealer is inevitably Charlie Dix as Thomas, who sweats and shuffles his way through the play, expertly toeing the line between nervous and frustrated and rising to his colleagues’ bait in a tragically predictable way. He’s the tallest member of the cast, but his hunched posture and constant anxious movements make him seem so much smaller.
Dix’s performance makes it difficult not to empathise with Thomas, the frog in the pot of water being slowly brought to the boil, as the others bait and goad him for no reason beyond the hell of it. But it is also hard to argue that he’s not his own worst enemy. He does dress badly, his wife did leave him, and he does resort to misogynistic tirades mere minutes after Isobel starts going after him. I think most would agree that the mental anguish that Isobel, Tony and Carter put Thomas through is unacceptable, but, when Thomas has just lost his job and Isobel tells him that he does it to himself, is she really wrong about him?
It’s easy to end up exclusively consuming media that carry themes railing against society or capitalism at large, big issues that allow us to blame others for our problems – and believe me, I’m not saying those messages aren’t worth sending. Indeed, Bull itself is a pointed takedown of corporate culture that does not lack for anger at the higher-ups, most obviously when Carter is onstage.
But it’s deeper than that. Bull is that rarest of things, a play that is not only about a nebulous theme or current issue, but about you, forcing you to confront yourself and think on your own flaws, and a shockingly good example of one too. It’s genuinely confrontational in a way that few things are, leaving the audience not with condescending monologues but actual guilt.
As the lights dim after a harrowing hour and a broken Thomas is left sobbing on the ground, Isobel striding off back to work, you come to the horrible realisation that you’ve been laughing at a man being abused. The audience is not blameless in this play. We encourage the bullying by watching and laughing at it, and we are left to wonder which side of the ring we would find ourselves in were this to happen to us – be it Isobel, Tony, or Thomas, I guarantee that anyone who watches Bull will see themselves in its characters.
And with no characters to truly root for – none to get behind, none who can be called simply ‘good people’ – it’s hard to come out of it feeling particularly good about yourself.
