''The Two of Us'' is a 1970 play by
British
British may refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies.
** Britishness, the British identity and common culture
* British English, ...
playwright Michael Frayn
Michael Frayn, FRSL (; born 8 September 1933) is an English playwright and novelist. He is best known as the author of the farce '' Noises Off'' and the dramas ''Copenhagen'' and ''Democracy''. His novels, such as '' Towards the End of the M ...
. It consists of four one-act plays for two actors and is Frayn's first published play.
It was first performed at the
Garrick Theatre
The Garrick Theatre is a West End theatre, located in Charing Cross Road, in the City of Westminster, named after the stage actor David Garrick. It opened in 1889 with ''The Profligate'', a play by Arthur Wing Pinero, and another Pinero play, ' ...
by
Richard Briers
Richard David Briers (14 January 1934 – 17 February 2013) was an English actor whose five-decade career encompassed film, radio, stage and television.
Briers first came to prominence as George Starling in ''Marriage Lines'' (1961–66), but ...
and
Lynn Redgrave
Lynn Rachel Redgrave (8 March 1943 – 2 May 2010) was an English actress. She won two Golden Globe Awards throughout her career.
A member of the Redgrave family of actors, Lynn trained in London before making her theatrical debut in 1962. B ...
.
The four plays that make up ''The Two of Us'' are:
* ''Black and Silver'': A night in the life of a young married couple on holiday with a new baby. This was originally written for a season of one-act plays by various authors, for which it was not accepted; Frayn then wrote the remaining plays in order to create his own season of one-act plays. They were
* ''The New
Quixote
is a Spanish epic novel by Miguel de Cervantes. Originally published in two parts, in 1605 and 1615, its full title is ''The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha'' or, in Spanish, (changing in Part 2 to ). A founding work of Wester ...
'': An eccentric young man pursues a relationship with an older woman who met him at a party where she got inebriated. When she finds him at her door the next morning she wants nothing more of him.
* ''Mr Foot'': An Englishman seems to have formed a better relationship with his twitching foot than with his somewhat envious wife.
* ''Chinamen'': A
farce about a catastrophic dinner party, in which the two actors play all of the characters. (The host of the party remarks, early in the piece, that he has trouble telling his typical English friends apart, comparing them to the proverbial
Chinamen that all supposedly look alike.) The play is a tour-de-force, with the two actors changing costumes and assuming new roles without apparent effort. Frayn considered the frantic backstage activity funnier than the play itself,
[Barbara K. Mehlman]
"A ''CurtainUp'' Review: ''Noises Off''
''CurtinUp'', January 2000. which inspired his very successful play ''
Noises Off
''Noises Off'' is a 1982 play by the English playwright Michael Frayn. Frayn conceived the idea in 1970 while watching from the wings a performance of '' The Two of Us'', a farce that he had written for Lynn Redgrave. He said, "It was funnier ...
''.
Lynn Redgrave and
John Clark later optioned ''The Two of Us'' for a successful 1975 coast to coast United States tour. Unable to find one actor willing and able to play all the male parts, director Clark settled for three actors. For ''The New Quixote'' he had cast a black actor to increase the woman's dilemma, but when the play reached
Elitch Gardens
Elitch Gardens was a family-owned seasonal amusement park, theater, and botanic garden in the West Highland neighborhood in northwest Denver, Colorado, United States, at 38th and Tennyson streets. For more than a century Elitch's was one of the m ...
in Denver, the theatre producer refused to let the play go on unless the part was recast with a white actor. The same refusal was repeated throughout the tour.
References
External links
* Nicholas Wroe
"A serious kind of joker" ''The Guardian'', 14 August 1999.
*http://doollee.com/PlaywrightsF/frayn-michael.html
*http://www.kakiseni.com/events/theatre/ODU3MQ.html
''The New York Theatre Wire''.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Two of Us
Plays by Michael Frayn
1970 plays