Just Two People is a piece of new writing by Catherine Higgins which focuses on a domestic drama about the separation of a couple (Jack and Anna), apparently as a result of a sexual assault against Anna, committed by Jack’s adopted brother, Logan.
There is plenty about Just Two People which gives it the potential to be a perfectly enjoyable piece of new writing. The set (three sides of the round) draws us into the domestic drama, and the incessant noise of the traffic outside will force the audience to live the characters’ lives, surrounded by the big, bad, New York City. The acting, although varied, is never poor and Marcel Miller as Logan is wonderfully intimidating. He never fails to convince and is able to blend soft tones with an aggressive edge that is chilling when the audience forced to sit so close to it. The plot too, although hardly the most original work, is still intriguing and, as the director Ellie Piddock hoped, I did leave ‘feeling unsure who, if anyone, to side with’.
The problems of the play therefore, aren’t really the fault of the acting or the general concept but in the fact that the dialogue of the script isn’t convincing for the naturalist characterisation which seems to have been the goal. The sequence I was shown with Anna and her therapist was far too aggressive for a therapy session. When Dr Ober asks, ‘Do you think punching strangers is the right way?’, the line is too harshly delivered and the session turns more into a Mexican stand-off of sorts. When Anna concludes the scene with the line ‘I just don’t know’, I could not help but be reminded of GCSE devised piece performances and that want to convey something serious, without really knowing how to go about it. Krittika Bhattacharjee does try to get to grips with Dr Ober and her monologue about the woes of being a counselor, though pretty standard, still shows a desire to find more depth to the lines given.
Both Jack Haynes and Tim Kiely (as Jack, and his friend Sam, respectively) also put in good efforts, and their scenes together were the most convincing: Kiely’s awkwardness in not knowing what to say to help Jack will ring true with every male member of the audience. Haynes’ nostalgia drawn from looking at a picture of him and Anna in happier times is touching, and his ability to defocus his eyes and glaze over in memory works powerfully in this small space.
There are moments when the script does work well, and I particularly liked the detail of some of Jack’s memories (offering Anna a ‘little red cloth with a snowman on it’ to clean her dress when they first met) but more work would have to be done on the writing to release the potential of the acting. This will no doubt be a perfectly adequate piece of theatre, with some exciting moments (I think the ending, in particular, has the prospect of being very powerful) but compared with other new writing in Oxford, such as the innovative Not For The Faint Hearted last week, it unfortunately doesn’t stand up to the mark.
