BWW Reviews: Mike Bartlett's BULL Fights to a Foregone Conclusion in Avant Guardians' Maiden Production, Overachieving on Its Under-Budgeted Way

A battle for survival is about to begin in Mark Bartlett's Bull, the maiden production of The Avant Guardians, now playing at Warehouse Performing Arts Center in Cornelius. Combatants will include Isobel, whose main weapon is her looks; Isobel's supervisor, Tony, who has education and breeding in his favor; Carter, the boss tasked by corporate with trimming payroll; and Thomas, who has none of the above advantages, resides at the low end of the totem pole alongside Isobel, and hasn't been briefed on how he should prepare for the crucial meeting.

So can you guess which of these diligent workers will get fired? Perhaps I should add that this is not an American play. Or a comedy.

Thomas is certainly enterprising enough, arriving before anyone else at the office where the meeting is to be held. But although he is carrying a briefcase, he is loudly dressed in a suit you wouldn't imagine to be business attire, and he's clumsy, spilling his coffee soon after he enters and just as clumsily trying to cover up. Could be nerves, another disadvantage.

Isobel arrives next, dressed professionally and confident she will prevail. She knows how to unnerve Thomas, critical of his attire and pointing out a spot on his face that will remain irremovable - and to us, invisible - for the rest of the show. Just as importantly, she comes prepared, brandishing a bound set of sales reports that Thomas hasn't been told to bring. Thomas understands that Isobel is hostile, that she's toying with him, but when he calls her out on her calculating coldness and seeks to discover what he has done to deserve her hostility, she manages to turn it around so that he's on the defensive for wounding her.

A certain amount of taunting and teasing gets mixed into Isobel's deft assault, so Tony's sangfroid is a noticeable contrast as he strides into the arena. Absorbed in his smartphone, he tries his damnedest to ignore Thomas. But spinelessness isn't Thomas's problem. He persists in drawing his boss into the conversation and into his quest to discover why he wasn't notified about how he should prepare for the meeting. Without any attempt at sincerity, let alone contrition, Tony says he thought he had sent him an email.

When Thomas turns up the heat, voicing the suspicion that his co-workers are conspiring against him, it's Isobel who is incensed. She wouldn't submit any more readily to Tony than she would to him - though she's had the opportunity, a claim that Tony's reaction seems to confirm. But in a survival-of-the-fittest situation, it's not easy to be sure how much of what anyone is saying to the outmaneuvered Thomas is true. Quite natural for Thomas to doubt it all.

So the main element of suspense when Carter arrives, unless hope springs eternal for Thomas in your American heart, is how long will our hero be able to keep his cool. The guy from corporate seems to be a meticulous, practical man. He's somewhat willing, at first, to listen to Thomas's charges against his slickster co-workers, but how likely is it that Carter's sense of fair play will tip the scales - and will our stressed-out, outclassed, desperate hero suddenly develop the smarts to make his case convincingly?

Ah, how dearly we would love the momentum to change. This bubble-bursting piece is a perfect choice for launching Avant Guardians, providing plenty of sinew for the young actors, either just out of college or still enrolled, who play the three rivals. For the actor who plays the elder Carter, Neil Reda, it's a juicy opportunity to step back in front of the lights after many years behind the scenes. Like the newbies, Reda is a welcome addition to the local scene.

Close as they are to the audience, young actors are tested at the Warehouse, a name that belies its storefront intimacy. There is a difference between the polish I see in Kenny Petroski as Thomas, Christine Noah as Isobel, and Claude Eghan as Tony compared to the poise I witnessed earlier last weekend at CPCC Summer Theatre in a production of Young Frankenstein with undergrads in the principal roles. But the margin of self-assurance and polish is small.

A few more go-rounds with dastards like Isobel will no doubt harden Noah, top off her confidence, and smooth the rough edges, but she already has the physical sense of what this predator is about - and her chilling spirit of bloodsport. I'm not sure that Eghan needs to do much other than simply put more miles on his odometer before he fully fleshes out the arrogant, dapper savoir faire of Tony. The brainy cool is already there.

Petroski is further from the essence of Thomas, because he's not only too young for the guy struggling to keep up alimony payments to the ex, he's also insufficiently flabby, stubby, and fatted for the slaughter. He simulates a beached whale convincingly enough trying to chase Isobel around the room, he's likable, and he gives oafishness and clumsiness a good old college try.

Bull clocked in at just under 53 minutes on the night my wife Sue and I attended, giving me plenty of time to mull over the meaning of the title for the rest of the evening. My first impulse was to suppose that Bartlett had targeted Merrill Lynch as the company where Thomas and the sharks around him worked. And that may be exactly what director Quincy Newkirk had in mind when she guided this under-budgeted, overachieving effort, for the bull on the cover of the Avant Guardians' playbill tallies with the sculpted image that pops up when you Google the Merrill Lynch bull.

My second supposition may be closer to what Bartlett had in mind: the spectacle of a bullfight, where picadors and matadors prod, taunt, humiliate, and impale a valiant but foredoomed creature as a huge crowd cheers. If that's so, I can only wonder whether Bartlett is chastising us for watching this ceremonious butchery.

More likely, he sees our difficult-to-dash hopes for Thomas as akin to those of both what Thomas and the bull feel as they enter their respective arenas. We ought to know that Thomas doesn't stand a chance, but we keep harboring the irrational notion that good and right will carry some weight in the business world. Deep down, we know these virtues have no more worth than a bull's mighty valor and innocence in a bullring.

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