Comedy and tragedy can often make a nightmarish combination
Expectations also get a bashing in Art and Guff (at the Soho Theatre) in which two Welsh lads fail to get their names up in lights as writers in London. Holed up in a scuzzy bedsit, neurotic screenwriter Art descends into boozy despondency as the rejection letters pile up while sociable poet Guff makes the best of whatever comes his way.
Catherine Tregenna's debut play is a raggedy mix of sitcom, sentimentality and tragedy that touches on aspiration, art and cultural identity (the iconic spectre of Dylan Thomas still seems to hang pointedly over every Welshman with literary ambitions). But the play is at its best when concentrating on Art and Guff's relationship which shows Tregenna's promising talent for energetic dialogue and the kind of silly banter and sparring that evolves among close friends.
These characters are made more convincing by Richard Harrington as Art and Roger Evans as Guff, whose terrific performances make us care about these lads who see themselves as "just two dull boys from Kidwelly".
The play falls apart, however, whenever Art and Guff's manipulative hippy neighbours, Nicky and Suse, gatecrash their lives to expose the lads' self-conscious provincialism but also to bring a jarring air of Pinter-like menace. It's as if Tregenna wants to rewrite The Caretaker as slacker comedy and it doesn't work. But Bethan Jones's production, which moves to the Chapter Arts in Cardiff from April 4, ensures that even if Nicky and Suse seem to have come from another play they are strongly realised by Ralph Arliss and Glenna Morrison.
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