MASTER OF FRINGE 2019: TWO an impressive acting duel, in a pub
TWO
Stage 12 (Varscona Theatre)
Jim Cartwright is a British screenwriter – penning such hits as Road and Little Voice. A couple of years back, he wrote a play called Two, a nostalgic tribute to that venerable British institution, the neighbourhood pub.
The play is described by the author as, “No scenery, no props, no sound effects – just the cast, the audience and the script.” In this Fringe production, director Max Rubin and his two ace performers Julien Arnold and Ruth Alexander demonstrate that is all that’s needed. The seamless creation rushes at us in a series of vignettes all the while keeping up its momentum.
The show of course is set in a Northern English pub. Implicit in the authentic performances, you can feel the years of spilled beer on the floor, the bare bench seats and share the raucous relationships of the patrons.
Arnold and Alexander tear into their bar full of locals with gusto, instantly changing characters and accents. There’s the horny reprobate chasing a cheeky skirt while trying to cadge money from his bubble-headed girl friend, the old guy in the corner nursing his Guinness and remembering his long-departed wife. On another stool, a doddering old dear finds a few minutes of solace from her dependent husband, while two regulars josh with the ease of years of living together – laughing at their age and increasing girth. A distraught woman charges into the bar announcing she is “the other woman” and ready to confront the wife and demand her man. A bruiser bullies his mouse of a wife. A crying kid comes into the bar looking for the father who abandoned him.
Behind the bar, the barkeep and his wife bicker, their once vibrant relationship turned hollow and sour. At the end, the play takes an unexpected dramatic turn bringing genuine heartbreak and, perhaps, a glimmer of hope.
Alexander and Arnold capture the heartache and sorrows of these people with sympathetically nuanced interpretations introducing us to the sad and the funny, the lonely and the lustful, the frustrated and the disillusioned – experiencing love and loss in its many forms in a very entertaining hour.
5 out of 5
