Bull

A razor-sharp play about the fine line between office politics and playground bullying, Bull offers ringside seats as three employees fight to keep their jobs.

Mike Bartlett's acid-tongued play Bull opened at the Young Vic, London, in 2015, directed by Clare Lizzimore. It was originally performed at the Crucible Studio Theatre, Sheffield, in 2013, where it won the UK Theatre Awards for Best New Play. It also won an Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre in 2015.



Mike Barlett is an award-winning playwright whose plays include An Intervention (Paines Plough/Watford Palace Theatre); King Charles III (Almeida Theatre); Bull (Sheffield Theatres/Off-Broadway); Medea (Glasgow Citizens/Headlong); Chariots of Fire (based on the film; Hampstead/West End); 13 (National Theatre); Love, Love, Love (Paines Plough/Plymouth Drum/Royal Court); Earthquakes in London (Headlong/National Theatre); Cock (Royal Court/Off-Broadway); Artefacts (Nabokov/Bush); Contractions and My Child (Royal Court).

He was Writer-in-Residence at the National Theatre in 2011, and the Pearson Playwright-in-Residence at the Royal Court Theatre in 2007. Cock won an Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre in 2010. Love, Love, Love won the TMA Best New Play Award in 2011. Bull won the same award in 2013.

He has written seven plays for BBC Radio, winning the Writers' Guild Tinniswood and Imison prizes for Not Talking, and his three-part television series, The Town, was broadcast on ITV1 in 2012 and nominated for a BAFTA for Breakthrough Talent.



'Sinewy, stinging, witty... it's as if Bartlett has taken the nastiest needling from a Mamet or a Pinter play and put them into a space of pure verbal aggression'



'Short, slick and emotionally unflinching... delivers a decisive punch'



'A gem of a new play... chillingly evokes the dynamics of bullying, in school, the work place, and elsewhere'



'A writer with a startling breadth of ambition coupled with an ear for dialogue unmatched by many of his contemporaries... Bull taps into something incredibly relevant and potent'