FOLLOWING the success of last year’s impressive production of Rona Munro’s Iron at The Courtyard, local drama company 4Play continue their commitment to serving up hard-hitting drama.

On this year’s 4Play menu is a double bill of challenging theatre from one of the UK’s most celebrated contemporary British playwrights – Jim Cartwright.

Nightlife is the theme for both plays. Two is a bittersweet comedy set in the north with the colour and humour of a Lancashire pub.

The show stars an extraordinarily versatile pair of actors – Vey Straker and Dave Duthie. Both were in last year’s Iron and Vey was especially memorable as Fay, a woman serving a life sentence reunited with her daughter after 15 years.

In Two, the pair play all 12 quirky pub regulars as well as the bickering landlord and landlady who are harbouring a dark secret.

“It’s such good fun,” says Vey. “It’s brilliant playing all these different characters who between them have three different accents. Walking off using one and walking back on using another is a big challenge.

“The characters I play range from an 18-year-old teenager with attitude to an 80-year-old who looks after her incontinent husband and everything else in between.

“It’s such a challenge trying to make them different, but it helps that they’re written in a way that’s very sympathetic to the actors.”

The second piece in 4Play’s double bill, I Licked a Slag’s Deodorant, is a much darker, starker piece.

Set in the south it is a striking and poetic look at two lonely souls in a city’s back streets. ‘Man’ is a lost outsider who craves human warmth, ‘Slag’ is a desperate drug addict who only knows survival.

Through the most dysfunctional of courtships, they arrive at their own version of a better life. This piece features two new members of 4Play – recent Hereford drama graduate Tim Pitcher, who plays ‘Man’ while ‘Slag’ is played by third year performance arts degree student Kate-Anne Kelly.

Both plays are directed by another Cartwright, Johnny, a Hereford-based film director who was a winner in the Viewfinder Film Festival and came second in a Borderlines Film Festival competition.

Away from film, he also directs Sea Legs Puppet Theatre shows and, as Mr Bamboozle, is an experienced magician and children’s entertainer.

“He’s relishing getting into some serious drama,” says Vey. “And his eclectic mix of skills means he’s bringing some very inventive ideas to the production.”

Two/I Licked a Slag’s Deodorant run from Wednesday, January 21 to Saturday, January 24 at The Courtyard.