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| ID: the set for Two, created by India Scarlet Kolb |
Any would-be arsonists going to see Two at the Barron at the Byre tonight should know it’s the last time a cardboard set will be allowed on that stage, so drink in the spectacle. (It’s all been fireproofed, anyway.) For the rest of us, director India Scarlet Kolb’s set for the Green-Eyed Stag pub is beguiling nonetheless: a bar ‘panelled’ by thick dark lines, lit from below by a string of bright green lights. Behind the bar are rows and rows of bottles, bathed in the same poisonous light. These are Chekhov’s bottles; for now, they sit like sentries awaiting some violence. As for the characters onstage, they’re just drinking. Fiery explosions will follow, but only explosions of passion, I’m afraid.
When the Landlord (Michael Griffith) came out from around the bar for the first time last night, I noted absentmindedly that he was dressed a little like Shaggy: green top, dark trousers, brown shoes. In the ‘evening rush’ that opens the play, it was difficult to take in the others’ costumes, also by India. But soon individual actors were being spotlit (by Willa Meloth, on the lights), and with mounting horror I realised: It’s all Shaggy. Green tops (and scarves), dark trousers (one light skirt), brown shoes. Two is a 1989 play by Jim Cartwright about a bickering married couple—played here by Michael and Ruby Thake—who run a pub together, as well as the people who patronise the pub over the course of one significant night. Fourteen characters in all, most of them coupled up in some way or another. (Prepare to clutch your pearls: they’re all straight.) In the original production of the play, the actors for the Landlord and Landlady portrayed every other couple, too. India’s version has eleven different actors in the fourteen roles, so the Shaggy-ness of it all seems to gesture towards earlier productions, in which the whole cast actually was the same two people.
What changes when two people become eleven? One thing that is lost here is the sense that the central couple, the Landlord and Landlady, are working towards a breakthrough in their damaged marriage by role-playing variations on coupledom: resentment, grief, flirtation, infidelity, sheer freakiness, abuse. The breakthrough thus appears to arrive via a deus ex machina, a particular character walking in through the pub doors, lit match in hand to toss on the desiccated brush of their marriage. (I did love how characters enter and exit the pub by the central aisle, sometimes flirting with the audience on the way.) The other vignettes in the play, while bound together spatially, are now slightly disconnected from the story of the Landlord and Landlady. So what does it mean that Martha Thomson first appears as a charmingly lecherous woman with a submissive husband (Oliver Whigham-Hughes), then as a cowering woman belittled by her controlling boyfriend (Ezequiel Vigo)? What is the overall result?
One fortunate result is that Two showcases the talents of some of St Andrews’ finest actors, and if each vignette stands alone, that’s to their credit. As the Old Woman, Emma Smicklas lets her mask of docility slip slowly until her ferocity gets free, her love and hatred for her enfeebled husband, her horror at the long haul. Typecast once more as an Old Man, Buster Ratcliffe Van Der Geest is tender and reflective, his own grief just barely surfacing. A resonant pause is a great skill for any actor, but more unusual is Buster’s ability to turn an ellipsis in the script into a series of intensely communicative micro-expressions. A background rushing fills the quiet space as he speaks, a subtle touch by Annalise Roberts. Sacha Threipland, in a dangerously baggy wifebeater as the Moth, is full of frenetic energy that seems to have been forced down to a steady pulse, putting the moves on a confused, wary, wincing woman (Elodie Bain) in a menacing North London accent. A career flirt, something of a Jeff Goldblum type, he resists committing to his prim, long-suffering girlfriend, Maudie (Karoline Foss)—until back pain from dancing sexily brings him to his knees. Elodie gets a monologue of her own to emphasise how much her character resents being the other woman, how mind-bending it all can be. All the while, Ruby and Michael maintain a simmering tension, which they distil into sniping remarks to the audience and hostile teasing until it erupts. Their final two-hander is exciting and cathartic, Ruby’s restraint making her shouting all the more effective and Michael’s insouciant carapace shattering.
Don’t let the copious heterosexuality deter you: Two is playing again tonight. Coming sober is recommended; leave the drunkenness to the people onstage—you’ll want to take in as much of this as possible.
By Eliza (she/her)