Two (Bury St Edmunds Theatre Royal rural tour)
Jim Cartwright‘s play
for two actors taking on 14 roles between them is a sequence of
studies of fracturing relationships and those which have already
broken down. Not that you’d know it when Two
starts. It’s set in one of those pubs (think “Rover’s Return”)
in which people congregate at crucial points in their lives. The
apparently jokey spats between the landlord and his wife suggest the distorted reflexion which lurks at the bottom of a
nearly-empty glass.
It’s a bold choice for
this spring’s rural tour by the Bury St Edmunds Theatre Royal in
conjunction with Spinning Wheel Theatre. Designer Becca Gibbs gives
us an extremely realistic setting – you really feel that you’ve
come into a pub – in which director Amy Wyllie blends the
naturalistic with the symbolic, so that the characters we actually
meet handle real glasses and crisp packets while the landlords pour
mimed drinks for those regulars to whose stories we are not made
privy.
As the play progresses,
the mood darkens. We find sympathy for the lonely elderly woman now
simply a carer for her husband, for the widower who clings to his
memories and for the boy who wanders in looking for his father (who
is searching for him) while his mother languishes in hospital.
We hope that Maudie
will finally mange to rope in her would-be lothario of a sponger
boy-friend and wonder at the odd relationship between the
ever-so-hearty wife and her meek husband or that of the couple who
play practical japes with each other. When it comes to the “other
woman” watching as her lover buys drinks for his wife, the
control-freak husband all bonhomie with his male acquaintance and
back-of-the-hand with his wife, not to mention the build-up of
tension between the proprietors, then the mood is a much darker one.
Whisking in and out
with a changing array of hats, jackets, the facial expressions and
postures to match each character as he or she comes to the foreground
are Rebecca Dickson-Black and Matthew Springett. With the
audience at very close quarters, their performances are spotlit in
more senses than one. All their characterisations ring true and
engage the attention, as much for the broader canvas they display as
for its details. It makes for a thought-provoking evening.
