Bull

Mike Bartlett

WHO     Isobel, a young professional.

TO WHOM     Thomas, her ex-colleague.

WHERE     An office.

WHEN     Present day.

WHAT HAS JUST HAPPENED     Isobel and her two male colleagues, Thomas and Tony, wait for their boss Carter to arrive. Carter is performing an office ‘cull’ and will sack one of them today. In order to safeguard their positions, Isobel and Tony have ganged up on Thomas. They bully him and convince Carter that Thomas is the one who should be fired. The speech that follows comes at the very end of the play following Thomas’s dismissal.

WHAT TO CONSIDER

•	The insecurity of the job market and the brutality of the workplace.
•	In the original production the set resembled a boxing or wrestling ring.
•	The play makes reference to and is reminiscent of The Apprentice.
•	Isobel is described variously as ‘a bitch’, ‘icy’, ‘frozen’, ‘hard’, ‘tight’ and ‘anal’.
•	She says she is like that because she was sexually abused by her father. Thomas maintains that she is lying. You decide.
•	When she says she feels sorry for him, is it genuine, or is it mocking?
•	Make a decision about why she chooses to tell him all this. She could just as easily have left it.
•	What might she gain from going in for the kill in this way, and what does it suggest about the world in which she lives?
•	Note the unusual layout of the speech. First, short sentences each given their own line, followed by two/three longish paragraphs. What might this suggest about her thought patterns and what happens to her when she gets into her stride?

WHAT SHE WANTS

•	To flatten Thomas.
•	To crush him.
•	To kill in order to survive.

KEYWORDS     tough     shit     ex     crucial

NB     This play offers a number of other speeches from which to choose.

 

 

Isobel

I feel really sorry for you. […]

No Thomas I feel really sorry. I do. I promise. I do. I’m feeling sorrow. Right now.

You have a kid don’t you?

You do.

I know you do.

So.

So you don’t need to hide it.

You have a kid.

[…]

Yeah. Tough. What’s its name?

Is it Harry?

It is Harry.

I know it is.

You know how I know this?

It’s because once when we left work, I was walking behind you and you walked all the way down the road, and I could see you in front of me, and I saw you meet this woman in a coffee shop it wasn’t a nice coffee shop I was surprised you went into it, it was a Costa or something not even a good one a shit Costa, and I watched you meet this woman and she had a little toddling little thing, and I waited and I saw you go to the loo, and then I ran in and said oh I was hoping to catch you and I pretended I was in a hurry, and I had a little chat with Marion, is that her name your ex and she told me about Harry, and I said I was a colleague and you were taking ages in the toilet actually we talked about it we didn’t know what you were up to in there, but it meant we had a good talk about you, and in the end when you still didn’t come out I said I needed to dash and I’d catch you tomorrow instead, but that conversation with her gave me quite a lot of crucial information.

Which I’ve always known when you’ve tried to hide things or lie or whatever, I’ve always known about your life things that you don’t know I know. I know you have to pay Marion that certain amount every month and when she hears that you’re out of work her low estimation of you will drop even further it will I promise she won’t be surprised that’s the really tragic thing for you, she won’t be like oh my God you lost your job! Oh my God! She’ll be like, yeah of course he lost his job fucking retard good thing I got out while I could, better not let him see Harry too much don’t want Harry to grow up in the distorted disabled image of his fucking drip drip of a father.

I expect that’s what she’ll think.

It’s tough isn’t it, life.

Is it a lot more difficult than you imagined it would be?

I mean I’m sure you thought it was difficult but that through sheer hard work, and practice and training and long hours and inspiration and in your case perspiration you would come through and in the end, succeed, because you thought that despite everything, it was, in this country at least, a meritocracy and that fair play and honest, transparent behaviour at work would be rewarded in the end. That bad people like me would fall at the wayside and good people like you would triumph.

That’s what you thought isn’t it?

Oops.