Oh the joys of pre-bought tickets. Last weekend started with Eggs Royal with my lovely friend Toni at Teacup in town. This was good because it meant a diary entry of “Toni, Teacup, 10”, (alliteratively meaning good conversation, warmth and food) and because said Toni had tickets for Two at the Royal Exchange Theatre the following Tuesday!
Putting my over-tired brain’s amusement with the letter T aside, Tuesday 17th January was the preview night of Jim Cartwright’s play Two, directed by Greg Hersov and running until the 25th February. A two-handed real-time drama, Two is based on a night in a northern pub with Justin Moorhouse and Victoria Elliott playing the furiously feuding Landlord and Landlady, and all the customers as it goes! The play is basically a series of vignettes, colourful character studies, strung together with an increasingly intensifying narrative played out between the vitriolic publican couple.
As always the Royal Exchange gets you well in the mood way before you get to your seat. The atrium was transformed, ‘pub style’, with pool tables, fruit machines and juke box classics piping out – you were in the swing of things by the time the play started.
From the off the energy was high as Moorhouse and Elliott made a shift in a bar feel as ferocious as a boxing match. The gloves were off and, as well as the bar, it seemed that all emotional wounds were well and truly open. The acidic abuse that ensued was as hilarious as it was shocking and as fluid as the pints they pulled. Through the 14 characters played, which range from OAPs to a seven-year-old boy, Moorhouse and Elliott drag you through the loneliness and hilarity, vulnerability and randomness that are so very entwined in the human condition.
In her main role, Elliott is astute, adamant and alive. She is every inch the landlady; full on femininity and essentially emotionally damaged. But like flicking a switch she changes character to such an extent you’d swear her voice changed with it. From playing the Old Woman – who’s fine about having to care for her ailing husband, but desperately needs her pint of Guinness – to the “Big Man” obsessed Mrs Igers, which she played so humorously rampant and panting it prompted a loud applause, Elliott is super-charged and sharp.
Moorhouse, known famously for his comedy, is believably landlord through and through. Happy when the tills are ringing, and happier still to be distracted from real life by being the life and soul of everyone else’s party. He is absolutely hilarious as the skint and cheating lothario – the type of guy who hasn’t exactly lost it, but never really had it at all – and entirely haunting as Roy, who makes sure to let on to every one in the bar, whilst keeping his timid and browbeaten girlfriend Lesley, well and truly under the thumb.
The scene between Roy and Lesley was in fact one of the highlights for me. It marks the point in the play, and indeed in the evening in the pub, when the balance between the comedy and tragedy of life is fully tipped. As Roy, Moorhouse reveals a character that is vehemently critical of his girlfriend whilst simultaneously jovial with others. With chilling ease he instructs her to “keep your eyes down” as she nips to the ladies, (she actually asks permission to go). Moorhouse plays Roy with such an icily cruel ease and Elliot, Lesley, with such a thorough awkwardness that it was actually uncomfortable to watch.
Soon after they leave the pub, a bombshell is dropped in the form of an unheard question from a customer who’s returned after many years away. Quickly the focus returns to the landlord and landlady and the reason for their shared animosity, revealed in the form of a family tragedy that is drowned on a daily basis with every drink they serve.
By the end of the play, I was sat, eyes flicking intensely between the two main characters, in sheer anticipation of where they were going to take it next. I was so fully wrapped up in the emotional turmoil unravelling before me, that I was almost surprised when the play finished and the audience started to clap. And clap they did, and cheer, and it was truly well deserved. I spoke to Justin Moorhouse in the bar afterwards (for that read, having had three large red wines, and going through the full range of human emotion in the form of a theatre show, I enthused heartily of my enjoyment) and he said he thought they had been a bit rough around the edges. If that were so it was entirely suitable. There was a rawness throughout that merely aided the poignancy.
Billed as Under Milk Wood meets Phoenix Nights, I think Two is more Kitchen Sink Drama where Tubthumping by Chumbawumba meets Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart. Along with the characters, you forget about life for a while, and then are forced to face its ugliness as the bar closes and the lights go up. Overall, in the hands of Moorhouse and Elliott, Two is a very funny and very intense production. Very human, and beautiful.
Today I listened to: Muddy Waters, The Very Best of Muddy Waters and Permanent by Joy Division
Today I read: Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver and a million online news sites
Having been flicking through ‘What the Traveller Saw’ by Eric Newby, I was feeling particularly inspired by some of his high contrast shots. I was however working and had a lot to do so could;t just go off travelling about for further inspiration. So I wandered as far as the kitchen and (despite aiming for black & white, I couldn’t help playing with some food colouring) took this. Warning, blue food colouring is lethal, my hands look like they’re straight from the crime scene of a brutal fountain pen murder!
