It's now a month since the last performance of Two Into One at The Menier Chocolate Factory and I've finally got round to going through the reviews. Most of them were pretty good and there were only a couple of negative ones; here are some extracts:
The
mechanical ingenuity is literally mind-boggling and Cooney is an absolute
master of making every line, however feeble, count: the situation changes,
usually for the worse, every time someone opens his or her mouth and puts a
foot (not a sock) in it…Wilton implode(s)
hilariously in improvisatory desperation.
The variations Cooney works on the theme of people desperately trying to
explain why they are in the wrong bedroom with the wrong person at the wrong
time are positively Lisztian in their virtuosity. Nick Wilton is superb
as the PPS, his well-padded and often nearly naked body drenched with sweat as
he constantly tries to lie his way out of disaster, even to the point of
pretending he is having an affair with a tea-boy in the Foreign Office.
The heart of the play is
Nick Wilton as Pigden: the shy, tubby civil servant charged with booking the
guilty pair a hotel room. Wilton plays it shudderingly but gallantly
terrified, making increasingly crazy attempts to smooth things over and fend
off Pamela. A fine physical clown, he combines absurdity with brief
but precious moments of real poignant desperation.
Deliriously daft hanky-panky executed
with engaging vim and dexterity by a crack team. Pallid man-boobs flecked with
soaps suds from the bubble bath he has taken with his boss's randy wife, Nick
Wilton is a joy as the long-suffering PPS, an improbable object of passion who
is forced into every convolution of desperate cover-up on Willey's behalf
– to the extent of feigning an affair with a Foreign Office tea boy.
As you’d expect from a Cooney farce, Two
Into One has moments when you just can’t
help yourself — a spasm of convulsive laughter grips your throat and leaves you
gasping for air as the tears stream down your cheeks… Nick Wilton’s Pigden is a lovely mix of hopeless
helplessness and wild mania.
We love a good farce, and Ray Cooney is the master of them. Heck, he’s
ever garnered himself an OBE for being so very clever. The revival of his 1984
play Two Into One at the Menier Chocolate Factory proves that Cooney is still sitting near
the top of his game. The performances are all of a very high standard,
with Josefina Gabrielle, Michael Praed and Nick Wilton all giving energetic
comedic turns.
Tacky, ridiculous and
crass, Two Into One is everything a good farce should be… The play is set in the Westminster Hotel,
where MP for Thatcher’s conservative party Richard Willey and his wife are
staying before a political debate. Needless to say, Mr Willey is planning on
having a midday rendezvous with one of Thatcher’s secretaries while his wife
goes off to an Evita matinee. As is inevitable, however, not all goes to plan and
Willey’s parliamentary private secretary, played by a balding, awkward and
loveable Nick Wilton, futilely tries to cover for his boss as everything spins
wildly out of control.
When I first saw Ray Cooney's play in 1984, I dubbed it a "classic
farce". Encountering it again in the author's own revival, I see no need
to revise my opinion. If you're a devotee of farce – and
I realise not everyone is – Cooney's play can hold its own with the very best
of the French master, Feydeau. Farce is not a genre for the the faint-hearted. Cooney's production
achieves the correct delirious momentum and gets good performances all round.
Nick Wilton exudes mounting desperation as the ministerial aide, Michael Praed
as his sleek, silver-streaked boss resembles a discomforted badger and Josefina
Gabrielle as his wife registers suitable shock at finding herself in bed with
her own husband.
Ray Cooney pays homage
to Feydeau’s A Little Hotel on the Side with his deliriously funny 1981 farce
likewise revolving around thwarted efforts to conduct an extramarital affair in
a hotel. A terrific ensemble cast are all the funnier for treating it
with deadly seriousness and not letting their guard slip at all to indulge the
waves of laughter engulfing them from the audience.
The
production has the right degree of energy, and the performances are lively.
Nick Wilton’s George is almost unbearably manic, and Josefina Gabrielle brings
a lovely poise to Pamela.
(In) a cast that
delivers excellent teamwork under Cooney’s direction, it is Nick Wilton’s
Pigden, stripped down from bowler-hatted civil servant to embarrassed soap-sud
layered lover, who gets to score most often. He has lost the plot even more
than the rest in its many convolutions.
Regardless of whether you usually prefer to see big commercial musicals
or heart wrenching plays, everybody needs to see a good farce every now and
again, particularly when they are written, directed and performed to the standard
of Ray Cooney's Two Into One… the pace is
extraordinary, the timing is just as technical as the choreography of a huge ensemble
dance number. Michael Praed (Richard Willey) and Nick Wilton (George Pigden)
are sensational in the two leading roles.
Cooney marshals the physical business with formidable precision. The
mounting look of terror in Wilton’s eyes as he tried to surmount the latest
ludicrous obstacle hurled in his path is increasingly hard to resist.
