Two of Them

As the audience waits in the foyer, two bald-headed men in suits are coming down the stairs, measuring with a tape as they go. Whether it’s the gap between pillars or the distance between two patrons, one always calls out the same number. The futility of measuring without meaning.

This prologue leads into the main performance – in the round, with a screen on each wall showing images of Christopher Orchard’s oil paintings and charcoal drawings. The bald-headed man is a recurring motif in Orchard’s work, and this performance, written and directed by Russell Fewster, brings them to life as bland businessmen having an existentialist crisis.

If this sounds more like a performance for the Festival than the Fringe, you’d be right: it is much more abstract than the usual theatre you’d find at Holden Street or Goodwood. Its production standards are high – there’s quality lighting design from Nic Mollison; simple but effective animation from James Calvert that transforms Orchard’s art into something more dynamic – and this pairs well with the performers, who act with these images as a backdrop, or mirror the art live on stage. The three actors are excellent: businessmen Don Sweeney and Nick Bennett, together with Sophie Hollingworth, move around the space with elegance and purpose, clowning, playing straight, playing games, walking on chairs, and conversing about meetings with no agenda.

Yet the narrative feels like a dream in the way that the distinct events don’t quite connect: it’s challenging enough to join the dots in a given scene, to work out what is allegory and what is actually progressing the story, but determining how (and why) we got from there to here is even more cerebral. That’s not to say there must be a traditional narrative structure – it’s necessary we aren’t spoon-fed everything – but without some kind of payoff that would give the piece more context, it ultimately leaves too much unanswered.

Review by Mark Wickett

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