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Anthony Brophy and Sean Kearns Picture: Nicola Young Two Pints Coventry Belgrade B2 ***** Good conversationalists are rare: good friends on the same wavelength rarer still yet Anthony and Sean manage both (Anthony Brophy and Sean Kearns) in this UK Premiere production. As an old Mexican proverb has it, good conversation is a feast; Two Pints is a veritable banquet. Wide-ranging and whimsical, their conversation covers subjects as diverse as death, heaven, women and German football, and there is plenty to chew on. They are seated at the bar of an authentic Dublin pub with a range of whiskeys and its own bartender presenting pints of Guinness at their whim. I loved the way the bartender cleaned around the punter who wouldn’t leave! Anthony is in a difficult place as his 97-year-old father is in hospital and not doing so well. He does a lot of the musing and Sean has the trick of a good listener where he repeats Anthony’s musings to allow him space to elucidate. It is only as time passes and Anthony’s father has died that Sean really opens up. His is a more sensitive approach and Anthony’s silence is a clue that support is required and given. Some of this conversation made you feel that you were a privileged eavesdropper. There are clues that this conversation has been developing for some time; and I wondered if the two actors extemporised a bit. Nigella Lawson featured a lot, not necessarily cooking, but playing every position in fantasy football, egged on by Benazir Bhutto, Angela Merkel and Christine Lagarde! Would women have tackled this differently? Maybe not in a pub, possibly without such a long time to muse without the requirements of home and family rushing them. Sean and Anthony have a bit more than two pints over the time! The language is quite fruity, but as Billy Connelly always says at the end of his sets, don’t worry, by the time you get home you’ll be back to normal… I enjoyed this drama immensely. It had humour, honesty and plenty to take home and think through. It also had lots of laugh-out-loud moments to cherish. I love radio and, to me, this had the hallmarks of brilliant radio. I could have been happy to just listen and, come to that, would happily go again and again. Written by Roddy Doyle and directed by Sara
Joyce, the Guinness will flow (and be allowed to settle of course) in
this Belgrade Theatre co-production with Double M Arts & Events until
24-05-25. Jane Howard 10-05-25 |
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