Two girls, one wall, (and thankfully the resemblance to a certain YouTube clip possibly invoked by such a description ends there).
This new writing by Tim Keily is his exploration of the forging of relationships. Whilst Mona’s in the middle of a breakup, Bea’s embroiled in an affair. As the two next door neighbours live side by side, they begin to sense and affect one another. In a simple, symmetrical pair of rooms, separated by an invisible wall, a stark atmosphere is evocatively created. Watching this play there is the potential for an audience to feel as self-aware as the exposed minds of the characters and when Bea’s mobile rang several people sheepishly silenced their own- certainly a testament to the effect theatre can have.
In this play, the more well-established fourth wall takes a relative backseat, while the imaginary bedroom wall takes centre stage (both literally, and, well, not…). This exists as a conceptual barrier rather than a literal representation, giving the actors the opportunity to convey its existence more creatively than if there was a real barrier. Unfortunately this opportunity seems to have been missed in the extracts shown, with Mona (Georgia Waters) and Bea (Olivia Madin), both of whom give very watchable performances in other respects, doing little more physically than ‘connecting’ with a painfully wavering and often repeated palm-to-palm gesture in order to locate each other.
Imaginary paint and plaster aside, Waters and Madin create a startling contrast between their characters. Mona’s psyche is as cluttered as her room, her movements feverish and tense; Bea is ever-composed, simultaneously languid and wiry, with a confidence which becomes slightly sinister within the context of the landscape of exposed thought. The play opens with a duologue composed of disjointed phrases, well timed in order to produce occasional phrasal links between the two sides of the wall. The separation of their dialogue furthers an impression of the remoteness of their connection; Mona’s subsequent shrieks of “No understand! Yes?” in pigeon English serve as a testament to the impossibility of true communication.
These extracts served to showcase the germination of a set of great ideas. There is an overall impression of the potential to propel the two women towards something fascinating and disturbing, and I very much look forward to finding out what.
