EdFringe Review: Two Pints

Premiered by the Abbey Theatre in 2017 around Dublin pubs, Roddy Doyle’s ‘Two Pints’ made its UK Premiere earlier this year in Coventry. Set over three nights in a Dublin pub, two unnamed old friends gather at the bar regularly to put the world to rights. Only referred to as One and Two in the script, we’ll reference actors responsible in the review: Sean Kearns and Anthony Brophy.

In essence, all that happens in the play is craic between the two old boys, both of them grandfathers. In that, Doyle leaves himself no drama or action to hide behind, and he doesn’t need to. His mastery of dialogue evinced by his novels, translates perfectly to the stage, creating two perfectly believable, distinct, and entertaining individuals.

Kearns and Brophy give superb, understated performances, delivering the pitch-perfect, and often absurd humour with aplomb. When the conversation turns towards matters of death and life, they prove equally capable of pathos. Brophy is lively and prone to irony. Kearns isn’t quite the straight man, but he talks less, whilst thinking more. The chemistry between the two makes an old friendship more than believable.

Whilst there’s no central drama structuring their chats, a mortal thread runs through the play from the first moments. Brophy’s 90+ year-old father is in hospital, and not expected to leave again. He’s not ill, he’s just coming to the end.

So it’s natural that their chat turns towards the nuts and bolts of life, even if they can’t resist a wry jest no matter the subject. So when Brophy opens with a madcap story of parking up at the hospital, this evolves into ‘Celebrity Car Parking’, the pair’s imaginary TV show, hosted by none other than Nigella Lawson.

In essence, all that happens in the play is craic between the two old boys, both of them grandfathers. In that Doyle leaves himself no drama or action to hide behind, and he doesn’t need to. His mastery of dialogue evinced by his novels translates perfectly to stage, creating two perfectly believable, distinct, and entertaining individuals.

Nigella Lawson features heavily in this play, admired by both men, though Kearns seems to have a thing for women in authority more generally. Did anyone say Benazir Bhutto? No, only Kearns then.

It’s a cracking chat, directed with a light, but tight touch by Sara Joyce, wandering wherever the pair’s thoughts carry them, be it Germans discovering an afterlife, or the German football team waiting for a celestial chat. Meanwhile, their fantasy TV show keeps evolving, until the inevitable funeral shifts their conversation to more fundamental questions, such as why When the Red, Red Robin got a look in during the service, and why the grandchild chosen for the solo might have been the wrong one.

Doyle understands how people speak; how they connect. Is there a fair bit of swearing? Of course, but we’re in Scotland, the land of people who call their mates a c**t. I think audiences can survive a bit of perfectly normal sweary chat. Plus, done well, the perfectly timed curse is just the ticket for a belly laugh.

It’s all a distraction, of course, a way to talk of things other than loss and grief. Neither is fooling the other, or fails to care. Sure, the way they show affection is caged within masculine inhibitions, but it’s not absent, not at all.

Doyle knows that Kearns and Brophy aren’t huggers, but he does have Kearns share a devastating story – an act of huge vulnerability for such manly men. It’s in moments such as these that Doyle and Joyce underline the love between the two but never say out loud. Such is the manly way.

So manly that the pair end up discussing whether it wouldn’t be wise to marry a man in your old age for an easier life. “But”, one asks the other, “what if they were gay?!”

That’s ‘Two Pints’ for you. I cannot recommend is enough.