Two & Eight

This turned out to be an extremely thought provoking evening. It had been billed as ‘TWO & EIGHT, Life by Numbers’ and it certainly brought many aspects of life to the stage. Although EIGHT was the second half of the evening I would like to comment on it first. For those of you who have not come across this piece of theatre before EIGHT is by young writer Ella Hickson, who first presented it at The Edinburgh Festival, whilst a student at Edinburgh University. It is a series of eight 15-minute monologues, set on a stark stage with four chairs down each side, a low rostrum block in the centre, and eight par cans across the back. All the actors come onto the stage at the beginning and sit on their chairs, but only four perform, as prior to the performance, the audience is asked to vote for the four they would like to see.     

The choice I saw were 'Astrid', a young woman who creeps home and into bed with her sleeping boyfriend after a night out; 'Miles', an American survivor of the 7/7 London bombings; 'Andre', who arrives at his gallery to find his long term boyfriend hanging from the rafters; and Millie, a jolly hockey sticks, high class courtesan from the Home Counties who has her standards and rejects Sir Alan Sugar. Each of the monologues was extremely well written and performed.  Director Rob Mauler had worked hard with his cast to explore the psyche of their character. I was sad that we only saw four I really wanted to hear all the stories.

TWO by Jim Cartwright, of Little Voice fame, creates snapshots from the lives of the landlord and landlady and their customers, in a northern pub, on one evening.  I will start by saying that I felt there were a few places where the pace was a little slow and some of the pauses were longer than necessary. But having said that it was a beautifully crafted play, filled with much humour and pathos, which was skilfully handled by director Chris Earl and performers Claire Greenwood and Dave Kilmister. This is a challenging play, which requires the two actors to play all fourteen characters. Again it was set simply with black drapes and pub furniture, a bar and very few props. Throughout the play there were never more than two people on stage, but the actors, fighting their way through imaginary bodies, had created the atmosphere of a busy night in a popular pub, which was helped by the lighting. The play starts with the landlord and landlady serving at the bar so that the audience is immediately involved in the place of customers in the pub, and are treated to the private asides of the bickering pair. The whole play is written around relationships between couples, the old lady who cares for her husband and comes for a drink as a reward; the elderly widower who feels the presence of his late wife; Moth who thinks he is Gods gift to woman but Maude has the last laugh; the dominating male who completely controls his girlfriend/wife; the overweight couple who sit watching television; the wife who likes ‘big’ men whose husband is a timid mouse; the mistress who has come to confront the wife; the small boy who has been left outside by his dad; and those we do not actually meet, the stag party and customers in the other bar. The pair moved from one character to the next within seconds and then only had minutes to create the new one, apart from the pub owners who returned frequently. The actors wore a basic costume to which they added different shoes, coats, hats and other accessories. As there were very few props pulling the pints, taking the money, eating the packet of crisps and drinking were conveyed by superb mime.  All the characters were well defined with individual mannerisms and slightly different ways of speaking, and all totally believable. The tension between the main characters builds as the evening progresses until in the last scene, the unexpected cause of it is revealed. Claire Greenwood and Dave Kilmister are to be applauded for their character development, concentration and depth of emotion in this play. Congratulations to everyone involved with the evening.

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