(seen at the afternoon preview performance on 17th May 2025)
This National Theatre of Scotland transfer treads a familiar path in plays. Two alcoholics working through Alcoholics Anonymous.
David Ireland’s play is a cross between “People, Places and Things,” “Waiting for Godot” and the “head-to-head” sections of “Alas Smith and Jones.”
Milla Clarke gives us a clever collapsing table, a coffee maker and a few chairs for Finn den Hertog to keep his actors moving on and around. This causes the first problem, as, “in the round” nobody sees both faces for very long - meaning a lack of emotional connection for us watching.
Director den Hertog compounds the issue with exceptionally long scene-changes and striding around the outer perimeter of the playing area, Lizzie Powell firing off a single light occasionally for no real reason.
Jack Lowden (Luca) and Martin Freeman (James) are left to do the heavy lifting, and both rise to the occasion.
Lowden’s younger and frustrated attitude contrast nicely with Freeman’s 25-years-sober, worldly-wise manner.
If only Ireland had delved deep into both characters. Instead, it is noticeable that all references to sex get embarrassed laughs, a violent moment a gasp. Probably saying more about the “fan audience” who comprised much of the crowd at the performance the monkey saw, it still indicated the lack of cerebral grip the text exerts.
Simply, the subject has been done far better and less ponderously – and with a far more thrilling and real conclusion by other writers, and delivered by far more skilled and inventive directors.
There are some laughs in Ireland’s script, and they land thanks to expert delivery, but too much is predictable, too little explored and given a new angle, to be much more than a satisfactory showcase for fans to view two well-known actors working live.
