This 51-minute play starring a chicken may seem a startling evolution for the political playwright Robert Schenkkan, whose Broadway playwriting debut, “The Kentucky Cycle,” was six hours long, took us through 200 years of the dark side of American history, and won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Drama; his next Broadway play, the 2014 Tony-winning “All the Way,” about LBJ’s political maneuvering to pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act, was only three hours long, but its sequel, “The Great Society,” ran another three hours on Broadway five years later.
“Odd Cock” is a slight show, the kind that is most likely to be produced as part of a festival — as this one is. But it does ultimately reflect its playwright’s usual concerns with the uses and abuses of political power. Featuring Portuguese actor Jorge Andrade in a chicken costume, along with an animated projection of long-deceased Portuguese dictator Antonio Salazar, the play frames its political message in what’s meant as a lighthearted way. For all the show’s relative brevity, it takes an exceedingly long time to get to the point.
The first half is taken up with Andrade as the rooster telling us a folk tale, well-known to the people of Portugal, about the rooster of Barcelos. The rooster saves a pilgrim to the town of Barcelos from hanging after a rich man accuses the stranger without evidence of stealing some of his silver. The rooster, who is fully roasted, does this by crowing three times.
The chicken gives us a clue that this is an allusion to a passage in the Christian Bible – one of several throwaway lines that might have deepened the narrative if the audience weren’t so distracted by the chicken’s silly jokes and humorous plumage.
About halfway through, Salazar appears projected onto a video, and he and the bantam banter. We eventually learn that the politician turned this folk tale rooster, who was a common subject of cheap clay statues, into a symbol of “New Portugal” – so effectively that it’s the standard image on tourist souvenirs “on dishtowels. keychains. teacups. bookmarks. T-shirts. underwear.” – – which offends the rooster: “Where’s my share?”
Their exchange starts turning political when Salazar explains that the rooster tale actually originated in Spain.
“It’s a lie,” the chicken reacts, aghast.
“Who cares about facts,” Salazar says. “They just get in the way of the really important things, like your message. To train your audience to see more clearly, you must first teach them to close their eyes.”
Salazar then explains how he was able to rule Portugal for forty years – yes, through terror, “but for most citizens such blunt tactics are unnecessary.” Most are willing to put up with poverty and hunger, if they are convinced they feel “they are heroically re-living a “Golden Era,’ a simpler time, before messy things like Democracy…”
Schenkkan makes a convincing if convoluted case for how Salazar’s invention of the Barcelos rooster as a national symbol helped Salazar maintain his authoritarian rule. The leader was promoting the story as a parable of the importance of faith and justice, by which he meant obedience to authority.
“Old Cock” ends with the chicken arguing with Salazar about the depredations of his rule, and claiming that the dictator has been forgotten, while the Rooster of Barcelos still reigns. Salazar, who died in 1970, certainly is little known by current New York theatergoers (if Americans ever knew him.) I suspect this shallow dip into twentieth century Portuguese history had more resonance with the audience when “Old Cock” was produced in Portugal last year, through Andrade’s theater company there. But there are enough lines in “Old Cock” – like a ruler trying to get people to feel they’re re-living in a Golden Era; and not caring about facts – that feel well-timed.
Old Cock is running through January 19 as part of the Under the Radar Festival.
