Review of Two by Jim Cartwright
 | "cartwright play runs the gamut" by Aline Waites for remotegoat on 05/06/09 |  |
TWO by Jim Cartwright
At the Lion and Unicorn ***
This masterly one hour long play is written for 14 characters all of whom are to be portrayed by two actors. Samantha Joyce and Joe Shefer play the landlord, the landlady and all the customers of a Northern pub, on one typical, action packed evening.
It is a rather bleak, simple setting - a few chairs and tables scattered around and a bar at the back - leading to the dressing room, so that they can make rapid entrances and exits for their quick changes which are ingeniously worked out. The author provides them with suitable exit lines so that they can nip off and change into the various characters.
The landlord and landlady have a tempestuous relationship and they snipe at each other throughout the play, the outward bonhomie they show to the world concealing their deep inner pain and their immense irritation with each other. They confide their petty annoyances occasionally to the audience "Without me, this pub would collapse
Amongst other roles, Joe Shefer gives us a moving portrayal of a very old man who is still living with his dead wife - not physically or in a ghostlike fashion, but in his mind - a control freak who suspects his wife of "looking" at other men and also plays a seven year old boy who has lost his father. Moth is the local pub Lothario who cannot resist making passes at all the women in the room behind the back of his would be fiance Maudie. Maudie is the one who holds the purse strings and Moth finds endless ingenious ways of making her part with them!
Samantha Joyce's most memorable and telling performances are as the woman who loves big men like Hercules "You think they'll never die" but is lumbered with a weakling who takes hours getting at the bar; and as the forlorn mistress who is watching her lover chatting affectionately with his wife.
Both these actors have the versatility needed for this play and they work well together. Director Emma Blundell has managed to squeeze every ounce of meaning from the text which is funny, moving and tender by turns with occasional notes of high drama. A gamut of emotion for both the audience and the characters on stage.
ALINE WAITES
| Event Venues & Times | |
| finished | The Lion and Unicorn | 42-44 Gaisford Street, Kentish Town, London, NW5 2ED |
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