So long solo shows: the time of the two-hander is upon us

So long solo shows – the time of the two-hander is upon us.

It was my thought midway through Benedict Lombe’s magnificent Shifters, transferring to the West End after a stellar sell-out run at the Bush Theatre earlier this year. Critic Frey Kwa Hawking’s write-up of the initial run is one of the best reviews I’ve read all year, so it’s worth catching up on here. Everything about that initial assessment is as important now that the show’s moved to a 700-seat space.

Suffice it to say, Lombe’s work feels even more euphoric, yet startlingly intimate, now it has reached the Duke of York’s Theatre for a limited season. Led by two of the most exciting actors anywhere in the world right now – Tosin Cole and Heather Agyepong – the show certainly feels like one you’ll be able to look back on and say “I was there when…” – especially with the play soon set to be adapted for the screen.

The added canvas size of the West End also offers fresh opportunities for creative team members – Neil Austin’s lighting shimmers and refracts as the relationship between the two protagonists – Des and Dre – is told through a prism of distorted time and memory. You can sense the invisible string tugging at the duo as they bound across the stage, waxing and waning across decades of a relationship.   

After suggestions of a wave of solo productions in the last year or so (and sitting through a succession of them at the Edinburgh Fringe), it feels as though we’re entering a spell of magnificent double-acts taking the West End by storm. Hit musical Two Strangers (Carry A Cake Across New York) is wrapping up a fantastically well-received run at the Criterion Theatre, while @sohoplace is about to complete the trilogy of Death of England plays with two-hander Closing Time.

But two handers at the Edinburgh Fringe have stood out – Sh!t Theatre’s Or What’s Left of Us, Xhloe and Natasha’s A Letter to Lyndon B Johnson or God: Whoever Reads This First (also transferring to London) have been well-received, as has Daisy Hall’s enigmatic, almost ethereal Bellringers (transferring to the Hampstead Theatre next month and well worth a punt). The barnstorming Fringe First-winning VL has turned the Roundabout into a raucous space night after night. That’s on top of Adam Rapp’s Broadway hit The Sound Inside, pitting a Yale professor against a problem pupil. Also on at the Traverse is studio hit The History of Paper, while the International Festival is presenting David Ireland’s new play The Fifth Step. 

Speaking of Broadway, New York will have Patti LuPone pairing off with Mia Farrow in The Roommate, while the Great White Way is finally getting a Broadway production of Jason Robert Brown’s The Last Five Years with Adrienne Warren and Nick Jonas.

Two-handers offer something very different, and largely enticing, to performers, directors and writers. Closing Time star Sharon Duncan-Brewster likened it to a version of theatrical ping-pong when discussing Death of England with me last month. Every line, every movement, every moment, has to be reacted to in perfect synchronicity. There’s no moment for respite – and it’s all the more gripping for audiences.