JONATHAN BAILEY

AFTER STARRING IN THE SECOND season of Bridgerton—the lush period drama that has become Netflix’s most watched English-language series ever—the actor Jonathan Bailey could have done anything. He chose something that he knew would be a challenge. “Cock!” Bailey says brightly, over lunch on a sunny London afternoon. A woman at a nearby table looks up, possibly scandalized.

That’s the name of the play, written by Mike Bartlett, that Bailey, is more provocative than even its title might suggest, with much to say about sexuality, gender, and the ways in which labels, even the ones we’ve chosen, limit us. “It’s just four people onstage with no set,” he says, “yet it’s one of the most expansive things, emotionally and thematically, I’ve worked on.”