Behind the bonhomie
TWO
Wheatsheaf Hotel, 39 George St, Thebarton
To October 22
TWO is mostly about two – two people,
that is, and one pub.
Publicans Fay (Tanya Kaploon) and Les (Scott Fraser)
are your typical salt-of-the-earth Aussie bar keeps with problems hidden behind
their warm and friendly exteriors.
Many a couple passes through their pub, young and old, along with the
occasional solo local.
We get to know them all, and finally we really get to know Fay and Les.
Director Toni Main and fellow Flinders Uni Drama Centre graduates take Two, by
English playwright Jim Cartwright (of Road
and The Rise and Fall of Little Voice
fame) and create smashing front-bar theatre fare.
Tables and chairs are spread out, pub style, for the audience and
there's a bar proper on the band stage.
Musicians Rick Foster and Iain Atkinson, sitting stage side, deftly
support the play's ebb and flow with a score for two electric guitars.
At its essence, Two is a fast series of vignettes of pub
locals in their element performed by two actors.
Tim Lucas and Margot Politis play six
characters each. They deliver characters filled with charming comic bravado,
gentle warmth and lusty rowdiness.
Lucas and Politis hold all spellbound by the
raw, quirky, gentle and passionate personalities that Cartwright's earthy
dialogue, peppered with vivid imagery, offers us.
It's hard to pick a standout performance from this ensemble.
Recognisable as their stock characters would be to any soapie fan, all
four actors imbue each character with a reality in which you can recognise
something of yourself.
Two – too good to miss.
DAVID
O'BRIEN
● Review published in the Guardian Messenger,