★★★☆☆
Two of Us follows composite stories, made-up and real events, of John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s fabled last meet. This is based on a screenplay with the same title, dramatising events true and made-up, 6 years after The Beatles’ dissolution.
Two members of a 1960s boyband, becoming a band, becoming solo artists, becoming partners and parents. We see human stories and specific Beatles lore and legend infused in the dialogue.
What’s best about the show: you don’t need to know much, if anything, about the Beatles, or McCartney or Lennon themselves. They acre creativity distilled into these 110 minutes, where we see their tension on their artistic futures, their desires to navigate the world with positivity or nihilism.
More beautiful is the acting of two Barry Sloane as Lennon and Jay Johnson as McCartney, who create very very compelling and emotive performances.
Before the show starts, post-Beatles songs of Lennon and McCartney are played. Lennon both derides and congratulates McCartney on his artistic journey. McCartney softens and hardens towards Lennon’s isolation, his artistic direction, his parenting.
These are two people who’ve known each since 15-16.To have seen, grown and worked with each other, and reuniting at 40 after supposed falling outs, going from Liverpool to the famed Dakota building in New York, will carry a sense of history, on a very personal level. This was the bridge that communicated a lot of emotion for the audience. This helped anchor the story without the need for Beatles knowledge, professional or personal.
There is a bit of ambiguity at the end where the sequence of actions do not narrate cohesively. Lennon and McCartney are sitting face-to-face, potentially about to play music when a phone rings. John ignores it but McCartney seems alarmed and pleads with Lennon to pick it up. As Lennon picks it up, McCartney seems to be in floods tears, as Lennon speaks to his partner, Yoko Ono, and soothes her.
Alarms blare and colours appear on the tall windows of the Dakota building as McCartney slowly leaves the apartment, crying. We see Lennon still on the phone, and McCartney appears on the roof, which here is the front of the stage, on the phone to his partner, Linda. They both end their phone conversations simultaneously, with “I love you”. It seems as though they may be alluding to Lennon death.
This blunted the emotion for me, as I was left slightly confused, but hopefully for The Beatles fans in the theatre (plenty!), there was more meaning in the final moments of the play.
Two of Us is a beautiful study of two friends who grew up together and became singing sensations growing apart for natural or dire reasons, holding grudges and feeling guilt. In that respect, it is very moving.
Two of Us ends its run at HOME (Theatre 1) with two sold-out performances today – September 28.
Photo: Ross Kernahan
JADAR 