A Play on Two Chairs

Project Cube, Dublin

A Play on Two Chairshas more than a little local mystery wrapped around it. Written by Michael West, it was first performed in Trinity College in 1989, and starred Amanda Hogan and an actor then completing his studies in Trinity College – Dominic West (no relation), who would go on to star in The Wire.It toured briefly, and is one of those curious productions that more people claim to have seen than could actually be possible.

It rarely gets revived, probably because it is such a demanding script. West gives the audience two people and two chairs, and a script that runs the entire gamut of emotions, from love and lust to the frayed edges of logic at the end of a relationship, and everything in-between.

The pair, here played by Karoline Rose O’Sullivan and Andrew Adamson in a Strand Theatre Company production, begin the play in an animalistic, protean fashion; O’Sullivan flirts demurely before turning on a heel and batting Adamson away with the flick of her cold shoulder. As the play progresses, they move through various stages of their life and love, grief and joy, with a spare script that seethes with frustration.

These roles demand an ambitious level of physical dexterity, and actors that are part storyteller, part acrobat. In places, the pair click into place smoothly and effectively. Perhaps the best example is when Adamson plants himself in the middle of the audience, doing his best to tell an atmospheric ghost story while O’Sullivan shreds his hard-earned atmosphere with her untimely interruptions.

In the main, though, there isn’t enough freneticism or ambition on stage; this story needs a fury in its production to set itself alight.

Ends tomorrow