Robert Schenkkan’s playlet runs at 59E59’s Theaters.
As authoritarian-type political leaders come into and return to power, now’s a great time to look back at history to see how some of their predecessors turned out. That would appear to be the idea Robert Schenkkan had when he wrote his short play Old Cock, a satirical look at Portugal’s 20th-century dictator, António de Oliveira Salazar, whose Estado Novo regime lasted 48 years.
Schenkkan’s name is enough to fill 59E59’s tiny Theater C to capacity, and his Tony-winning LBJ play All the Way proved he’s a master of bringing historical figures to life. One might reasonably expect the same from this new piece, even with its much shorter running of 50 minutes, but no such luck.
As a comedy, Old Cock sags. And as a takedown of Salazar and authoritarian leaders of his ilk, it barely scratches the surface of what was wrong with his style of leadership. It also misses an opportunity to effectively sound a warning for the kind of truth- and decency-annihilating future we’re in for.
Schenkkan uses one of Portugal’s iconic symbols, the rooster of Barcelos (played by Jorge Andrade), to criticize Salazar’s government. Decked out in a colorfully feathered costume (designed by José Capela), Andrade takes the stage, dramatically lit from behind (lighting by João Fonte), as the first notes of Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra swell for a full two minutes (sound by Sérgio Delgado). It’s obvious that Andrade, who also directs, is going for ironic grandiosity here, and we’re meant to laugh when the lights finally come up and we see a man in a bird suit. Alas, only crickets.
It’s a bad omen for the mostly humorless remainder of the show. A few gratuitous penis puns follow before the rooster begins relating his origin story for the play’s first half, which is far too long for an anecdote that can be gleaned from a Wikipedia entry. The gist of it is this: A stranger comes to the religious town of Barcelos, is wrongly accused of stealing, and is hastily sentenced to be hanged by a hungry judge. The accused man warns that while he’s hanging, the judge’s cooked rooster will crow. Sure enough, the rooster gets up and squawks, the judge rushes to town, and the stranger is set free.
The story is meant to get across the point that the religious, easily duped populace of Barcelos will believe anything. Authority is never wrong, and on the rare occasion that it is, God will intervene. That’s the philosophy of Salazar, whom we meet in the play’s second half, via video. With a bit of impressive filtering to Andrade’s face (video design by Um Secundo Filmes), Salazar comes to life relatively convincingly onscreen as he and the rooster trade potshots: The rooster, says Salazar, is merely a clay souvenir of his own invention, and Salazar, says the rooster, is a forgotten has-been whom no one thinks twice about anymore.
They go at it for a while until a frustrated Salazar fizzles and flickers out, hurling one last invective as he tells us all to go to hell. It’s a sputtering ending that makes the rooster’s final “cock-a-doodle-do” more snooze than wakeup-call. Andrade and Capela’s Mala Voadora theater company brought Old Cock to the States for the Under the Radar festival after premiering it in Porto last year, but they would have been better off leaving this rubber chicken there.