10 February 2012 (Theatre Review)

Star Rating: 2.5/5

Venue: The Project Arts Centre
Directed by: Leona Nally
Written by: Michael West
Starring: Karoline Rose O'Sullivan and Andrew Adamson

In a relationship we can be painstakingly close to our beloved - or excruciatingly far apart. Michael West's 1989 debut, A Play on Two Chairs, explores what sends us to either state, examining the way we react and interact with our paramour. Combining a rapid physicality with overwhelming humour, Strand Theatre Company's production is familiar, and funny within that. But it lacks sufficient pathos for us to connect with what's put on the stage.

Two actors (Karoline Rose O’Sullivan and Andrew Adamson) and two chairs engage in a flirtation that starts off coy becomes knowing, manipulates, frustrates and ends in an energetic ride. The prudish then playful physicality continues into the morning with apt animalisation woven throughout, making the mating dance seem both predatory and child like, creating an awkward air that should leave us askew.

Unfortunately the company seems more interested in pursuing the giddy humour sprinkled through West's script rather than exploring the darker subtext that boils beneath the whimsy. When you're pissing yourself and not even a little disturbed by an imagined confrontation between a rapist and a vengeful victim you know a point has been missed. There's no sense of the anger, pain, competitiveness or the finickiness that can drive one to drink, or darker, and the rushed pace diminishes the juvenile spark between the leads.

What's lacking is clarity. I was never sure if this was a surreal interpretation of one couple's despair or a collection of unrelated spiels. Director Leona Nally hasn't framed them in anyway to make this clear and hasn't pushed her performers to express anything beyond their surface expressions.The mirth relies too heavily on the combative nature of the leads, with little time given to the frustration that initiates it, nor the valid points raised by the playwright, such as a is it the thought or the cost that counts.

A Play on Two Chairs needed a more thorough finessing, a sharper eye and a braver physicality than Strand Theatre Company have given it.

Review by Caomhan Keane

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