by Sarah Cope

Tennessee Williams spent more than ten years working and re-working The Two-Character Play, and he described it as his “most beautiful play since ‘Streetcar’”. Despite this, however, it is one of his less well-known plays and has rarely been performed.

The two characters in question are Clare (Catherine Cusack) and Felice (Paul McEwan), sibling actors who have been abandoned by their company and are staging a play for an audience who may or may not be there. Trapped in a theatre with an incomplete set, they embark on performing a play which is either based on or has strong similarities to their own traumatic lives. Acting seems to provide both an escape from reality but also a chance to confront emotionally difficult issues.

Clare first appears on stage bedecked in a tiara, which of course brings to mind Williams’ most memorable heroine, Blanche du Bois, brought to life so unforgettably by Vivien Leigh in the 1951 film of A Streetcar Named Desire. Clare is in many ways an archetypal Williams heroine: neurotic but witty, needy but resilient.

The power-struggle between the siblings at first manifests itself in their struggle over the content of the play they will perform. Whilst Felice ordinarily has control over this, Clare insists that “it’s going to be total collaboration on this occasion”.

All the classic Tennessee Williams themes are here: troubled families, loss, pain, fear, mental illness, and a traumatic past event that the characters skirt around but never quite address.

It doesn’t sound like the lightest of evenings, and perhaps it isn’t, but the unexpected wit, the superb performances (that of Catherine Cusack is particularly of note) and the rare chance to see a forgotten Williams play mean it is to be recommended.

The Two-Character Play is at the Jermyn Street Theatre until 20th November.