4Play presents an unforgettable double bill (From Hereford Times)

4Play presents an unforgettable double bill

1:49pm Monday 2nd February 2009 in

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LOCAL theatre company 4Play has a reputation for staging challenging drama, and its most recent production of a Jim Cartwright double bill featuring Two and I Licked a Slag’s Deodorant doesn’t disappoint.

Both are powerful two-handers, with the two actors in Two, Dave Duthie and Vey Straker, playing not only the landlord and landlady of a northern pub, but also a cross-section of their clientele, both of them dexterously adopting every new character and convincing instantly.

It is clear from the start that this is not a happy partnership – something has happened, but there are few clues to what. Do any of the other troubled relationships that pass through the pub – an old woman seeking a brief escape from the burden of caring for her incontinent husband, a young woman desperately trying to clip the wings of the scrounging boyfriend whose eyes are always elsewhere, and the woman with the dazed look of a rabbit caught in the headlights as she tries desperately to placate her abusive partner – provide any answers?

In the end, it is the lad forgotten by his dad, left outside with ‘pop and a packet of crisps’ while his father drinks, who provides the catalyst for resolution and the couple’s volcanic pain finally erupts as they face the tragedy that has been corrosively destroying their relationship.

The second work in a powerful double-bill is, like Two, a love story of a kind, but the happy-ever-after has nothing of the fairy tale about it. I Licked a Slag’s Deodorant takes no prisoners – it’s bleak and ugly, but at its core are two people so damaged that their skewed relationship makes a certain kind of touching sense.

The language is harsh, the story not pretty, but Tim Pitcher’s Man is sympathetic, while Kate-Ann Kelly’s portrayal of the crack-addled prostitute who’s given so many names to so many clients that she’s forgotten her real one, is outstanding. Not comfortable to watch perhaps, but not easy to forget either.