Review: Double Act (Southwark Playhouse Borough)

Review by Sam Waite

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Note: Double Act deals heavily with themes of depression and suicidal ideation, please check the content warnings before booking.

At one point or another, we’ve all felt pulled in two totally disparate directions. Maybe there’s been a tough decision to make, or how we feel about something happening in our lives isn’t totally clear, and it can feel like there are two separate selves bickering over the right thing to do. Double Act, Nick Hyde’s two-hander now playing at Southwark Playhouse Borough, literalises this idea, with Hyde and his co-star Oliver Maynard as two halves of a fraught whole.

Our protagonist goes unnamed, but what we do learn paints him as painfully average – in his late twenties and holding a mundane office job, neither fat nor skinny, or particularly muscular, and standing at 5’11” despite protests of scraping that extra inch. Beginning his self-narrated journey at 8:10, he has opted to abandon work for the day in favour of a coastal trip, on what he increasingly alludes to being the final day of his life. With Hyde and Maynard both alternating and sharing narrative duties, and subbing in as the handful of other characters, their comedic prowess and dramatic abilities are put to strong use.

The pair’s dynamic is quickly established, with their introductions to the scene overlapping and interrupting each other until a careful equilibrium is found. Where Maynard wants to get right on with the day, direct to the station before doubt can set in, Hyde states instead that he will take his time going through Central London once more to observe the people and enjoy things he might not usually stop to. Having two actors play a singular role could be confusing, but Hyde’s command of humour is used particularly well in establishing the titular double act as two sides of the same coin – it’s as if two actors have mistakenly been cast, and each is determined to out-perform the other, until their obvious chemistry unites their storytelling.

Hyde’s sense of pace is also strong, the 90-minute show moving along at a steady trot without either lingering too long over minutiae or barrelling towards its conclusion. For better or for worse, Hyde seems to have a clear sense that a person about to give in to their despair may not be frantically running to that end, but simply living out a day in real-time knowing it to be their last. There’s a welcome slice-of-life quality to earlier scenes in particular, such as awkward run-ins with tube passengers and bickering between the two selves about whether their carriage is at the front of the back of the train. Some of the evening’s biggest, and most knowing, laughter came in such moments, where Hyde’s witticism around London life proved utterly winning.

The writer is, of course, also very skilled with the more tragic touches of storytelling. Managing without shoehorning or over-selling the points to present a tragic figure who simply doesn’t know how or why to seek out the help he needs, there’s a real anguish behind the inability our protagonist finds to ask for support when it’s all but handed to him on a platter. Hyde takes on what is, at first, the more enthusiastic side of the character, the one determined to go out and have some fun, tasking Maynard with dragging him grudgingly back on track – a perfect comedy double act, until the plan for the day becomes apparent.

It would feel wrong to review their performances separately, their being so intertwined and fully connected. Both Maynard and Hyde do beautiful work when tasked with weightier moments, while also bringing some genuine levity to the story through their comedic encounters throughout the day. Each actor transforms magnificently into new characters when these encounters are acted out for the audience, though I will admit that one – unintroduced as it was – did throw me for several minutes, during which I was left to assume the “two personalities” had well and truly begun to separate, only to realise Maynard was performing the role of an ex-girlfriend called out of desperation to connect.

Jef Hall-Flavin does well with the material, keeping everything moving as it needs to and maintaining the delicate balance of the two performers. The evening is presented as a mix of old-fashioned comedy show, mime implemented in transition, physical comedy in the introduction of time and setting, microphones used when speaking directly to the audience, and Hall-Flavin succeeds in having this be the overarching energy until the final climactic moments. With scenic design from Christophe Eynde, with blinds behind what at first sems to be a theatre curtain allowing Holly Ellis’s lighting to encapsulate the passing of the day, there’s a strong implication that the protagonist is performing his own undoing for us, an effect which worlks well with Hyde’s script.

Relying heavily on its leading players, Double Act is a strong piece which makes a little go a long way in terms of what simple, intimate staging can offer to a work with grander themes at play. Both actors are stellar, the storytelling relatable and finely tuned, and there truly is no funnier or more heart-wrenching way of show self-hatred than having one manifestation of a man pelt the other with half-filled fast-food boxes.

Double Act plays at Southwark Playhouse Borough until April 5th

For tickets and information visit https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/productions/double-act/

Photos by Tanya Pabaru