The Small Things

Synopsis

An elderly man and woman sit on two armchairs in a large empty room. She carefully polishes 12 small ceramic animals as he contemplates dragging himself to the kitchen to fix a cheese toastie. They begin to talk of childhood memories stuffed with details, of small things. But slowly their talk turns to the horrors and atrocities they've experienced - of a kind of language cleansing that has swept through their community - and we realise that they are the last two people left on earth and that one of them will have the responsibility of speaking the last word to ever be spoken.

Our Review:

4 February 2005

Small talk is a much maligned and under-rated past time – particularly as depicted in Enda Walsh’s new play The Small Things at the Menier Chocolate Factory.

The piece is part of the This Other England season in collaboration with Paines Plough, the theme for which is works ‘inspired by the English language’. This seemed to me a rather banal and pointless way of tying together the season – but Walsh’s play justifies the title entirely.

In it we meet an old man and woman sitting on chairs on a long thin rectangular stage. Both hold clocks and take turns to recount what at first seem to be sentimental and sepia memories of their childhood. But as their truncated and highly amusing monologues develop we learn the strange events that occurred in the town of their youth.

The woman’s father was obsessed with order. So much so that speech itself – unless functional – became a reflection of the chaos of life. So, with the help of other like-minded town...

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