Review: Two at Shakespeare North Playhouse ***1/2

There’s a satisfying sense of symmetry about this Shakespeare North Playhouse revival of Jim Cartwright’s perennially popular Two.

There’s the physical symmetry of the octagonal bar designer Kay Burley has placed in the middle of the Cockpit Theatre’s octagonal stage, around which the action swirls to a background hubbub of pub noise.

And then there’s the casting, which brings the two-hander full circle.

The playwright was originally commissioned to write Two for John McArdle and Sue Johnston - Brookside’s unlikely lovebirds Billy Corkhill and Sheila Grant – who premiered it at the Bolton Octagon in 1989.

Now nearly 30 years on, another pair of former Brookie stars, Michael Starke (Sinbad) and Sarah White (Bev McLoughlin), are taking on Cartwright’s cavalcade of characters.

The past, as LP Hartley wrote in his novel The Go-Between, is a foreign country, and while some aspects of life three decades ago remain very familiar, others have changed beyond recognition.

Funnily enough, back the late 80s/early 90s I used to spend university holidays working behind the bar of my village pub, serving mild and bitter to the locals for £1.10 a pint and lager, glasses of Eisberg or the occasional Babycham to the punters from the Black Country out in the country for a spot of karaoke.

The Wheatsheaf is long closed, turned into a pair of houses, and traditional northern local boozers like Cartwright’s pub - a sort of community centre/support network for its regulars, just with added alcohol – are also increasingly a rarity, most of their ilk gone to the wall or turned into homes, gastropubs or perhaps a ‘Spoons.

This changed landscape gives Two the distinct feel of a period piece, and there are parts of it which also feel a bit, well, dated.

But what remains strongly resonant is its ‘all human life’ aspect, with Starke and White rotating nimbly through a whole host of recognisable characters, all with their preoccupations and frailties, over the course of the brisk one hour 35 minutes running time.

Above and top: Mine hosts of The Shakespeare played by by Sarah White and Michael Starke. Photos by Alex Hurst.

It gives both the chance to show us their full acting range.

The engine room of the piece are ‘him’ and ‘her’, the landlord and landlady of The Shakespeare free house (as a pub sign in the auditorium tells us) whom we first meet as they set up for opening time in a symphony of passive-aggressive sighs, huffs and slams.

Once the doors are unlocked, they execute another neatly choreographed ballet behind the bar, punctuated by brittle bickering and insults much in the mode of a northern Den and Angie Watts. Something evidently isn’t right, but we don’t learn exactly what until the play's final, intensely moving scene.

In the meantime, Starke and White vanish in turn to reappear as a succession of punters, from a distraught little boy who has finished his pop and crisps outside but has been forgotten by his dad, to an old woman who relies on the pub as an escape from the relentless drudgery of caring for her invalid husband, to a gentle and lonely widower who poignantly - albeit briefly - shares tales of his day with his dead wife.

While a handful of characters never fully escape caricature, or even come over as borderline bizarre (for example, White's forceful woman obsessed with big strong men, and her timid partner – Starke gurning away like Benny Hill), others are powerfully drawn by the actors under Lisa Allen’s direction, not least in the opening scene of the second half which is writhingly uncomfortable.

Above: Michael Starke and Sarah White in a powerful scene from Two. Photo by Alex Hurst.

In this, White impresses greatly as a woman cowed into fearful and apologetic silence by her abusive partner - a leather jacket-clad Starke who produces a performance of sinister calm and explosive darkness. If anyone needs the ‘ask for Angela’ campaign it’s White’s character, and it’s sobering to recall that in 1989 police were even more reluctant than now to involve themselves in ‘domestic’ abuse cases (and indeed marital rape was still legal!).

But it’s not all pathos and heartache and heartstrings and sudden violence. There are also plenty of comedic moments, not least Starke’s swaggering lothario working the audience like a scally James Blunt (‘you’re beautiful’, ‘you’re beautiful’) in outrageous mullet and ‘Scouse tuxedo’.

White and Starke enjoy a warm on-stage rapport and the intimate space (very similar to the Octagon where Two started out) means while there’s not actually any audience participation, everyone watching feels drawn into the action as though they were there in the pub with them.

So much so that after the interval, someone close to the stage was emboldened to try a little cheeky bantz with Starke who, as a veteran of the Liverpool Royal Court where the fourth wall is often demolished, dealt with it smoothly and cheerfully.