Table for Two: A Series of Duologues

A People You Know Production

17/11/24 - 19/11/24

Rector’s Cafe, St Andrews Student Association

Directed by Freddie Greenwood and Lexie Dykes

Produced by Piper Richardson

Writing advising by Ida Ekrheim

Review by Noor Zohdy

The merriment, grandiloquence, understated gravity, and voice-cracking hysterics of more than a dozen writers leant carefully across three square tables, set with red-checkered tablecloths, neatly laid with cups, plates, cutlery, and, naturally, a great many bottles of wine. A performance in two acts (‘Lunch’ and ‘Dinner’), Table for Two was a series of restaurant conversations, each penned by a different writer: in order of appearance, the scenes were written by Isy Platt, Scarlett Tew, Maisie Michaelson-Friend, Arnaz Mallick, Loulou Sloss, Zeynep Kayra Yildirim, Daisy Paterson, Oceane Taylor, Dylan Swain, Elena Koestel Santamaria, Lexie Dykes, Aidan Monks, and Maisie Michaelson-Friend. The forks would clatter, the waiters would usher couples waiting in the shadows, the spotlight would shift and the chatter rushed forth. Often begun unmindedly mid-conversation, I felt less like an audience member than a fellow restaurant-gower, leaning back rather a second too long in a nearby chair. Indeed, it was remarkable to see how a snatch of conversation can become undeniably captivating theatre. It might have been called a twenty-first-century comedy of manners with all the exuberance and understated, elbow-leaning confidence of Restoration comedy. Set to a brilliant pitch of poignancy, caricature humour, and flickering gossip, the range of characters, voices, contexts, and dialogues made for a singularly dynamic two-hour production.

The myriad of writers made each dialogue marvellously idiosyncratic; the careless mannerisms, pronounced looks, and turns of phrase made each hardly ten-minute performance impossible to forget. From the fervent vociferations of a concrete patron to his languishing date (‘no, no, no Rachel, you’re thinking of rock’) to the dreadfully funny disquiet of a man fully intent on having ‘the perfect birthday dinner’; from a glimpse of the finely wrought tension of a faltering relationship to the merrily roaring despair of a sitcom-worthy lawyer rambling on to his bright-eyed, bushy-tailed intern (‘but I jest, I jest’); from a mother’s busybody abundance going a mile a minute to the careless spoken eccentricities of two young actors lamenting the arts (‘and trying to convince complete strangers of a story!’). A quintessential crowd-pleaser, sparking endless laughter, catching every shade of character and hilarity, riot and subtlety, Table for Two: A Series of Duologues, was an absolute success.