Brighton Year-Round 2024
John & Thomas
Andrew Kay
Genre: Comedy, Contemporary, Drama, Fringe Theatre, Scratch Performance, Short Plays, Theatre
Venue: Latest at Horatio’s Bar
Festival: Brighton Year-Round
Low Down
What do you do when one half of a double-act retires but the other sailors on, with their retired lover staring at Corrie? Andrew Kay’s John & Thomas makes its debut directed by Carole Todd as a rehearsed reading at Horatio’s Bar at the end of the Palace Pier.
A gem in the making.
Review
Who’s white-washing a colourful drag act that lost half its colours? Try working out the pun. What do you do when one half of a double-act retires but the other sailors on, with their retired lover staring at Corrie? Andrew Kay’s John & Thomas makes its debut directed by Carole Todd as a rehearsed reading at Horatio’s Bar at the end of the Palace Pier.
It is though more than that. A rehearsed reading that flies off the page, but also an act of homage to someone who should have been one of its adornments.
The event also launches a charity initiative and new drama prize in the name of actor and drag artist Jason Sutton. Sutton was an extraordinary human being; his loss was also commemorated by this performance of a play originally written with him as John one of its two main characters. The play is prefaced by an address by Kay and a short film made by Nathan Croft, of whom more later.
The magnificently louche-limbed Allan Cardew as John now takes up that mantle, as he did for another Kay play featuring Sutton (Morning Glory). He is joined by Dave Lynn as Tom, who it was also written for. John & Thomas has expanded from an original two-hander format to include both a new character Adam, played by Nathan Croft, with BBC Radio star Allison Fearns reading in deft (and not obtrusive) stage directions.
John & Thomas is set in the living toom of a couple who devoted their lives to showbiz and fleeing visits by Doctor Theatre. Tom laments the more brilliant John’s retirement, lamented indeed by the whole circuit. He’s had to rebuild his solid but less brilliant career without John’s one-line zingers that still shoot from the hip. Even when John is semi-recumbent. And he usually is.
Scenes both moderate and very short are punctuated by deft lighting cues directed by Todd. Who seems in denial this is a rehearsed reading and persists in scaling it as a production. Thankfully. With costumes and a solid miniature set (designed by Todd) any feel of rehearsed reading fades. Cardew is sovereign as John. Lynn as Tom comes memorably into his force when he begins to riff his act. He might be unleashed earlier, as Lynn shines in these moments.
The dynamic turns on how to goad retired John and the coruscating wit irradiates brief and longer scenes. Perhaps too the introduction of Adam might be built up earlier, as real drama begins halfway, where Tom starts rubbing up his act more from home, and like a genie Adam appears. Croft is more than able to gleam with youthful hue and provides a warm foil to the eternal tug of tenses between John (past) and Tom (future).
Kay is clearly aware that John & Thomas could easily have gone dark, as in a sense the production did after Sutton wasn’t able to perform. Kay sets up that possibility; there’s an occasional suggestive tension. Sitting in armchairs waiting for God, oh. Then not. That sudden lurch at each scene, starting out of black enacts a continual beat.
Kay’s subject-matter is singular, with a perennial theme – relinquishing art or letting it heal you to death – lent fresh life. Gradations of age modulate Tom’s act as he predicts it tick-tocking gently tilted to oblivion. Characters edge pathos playing against and with the text and one leaves with the sense of ache, regret and release blossoming still further in what is ostensibly a comedy.
This mood is though periodically blown away with a raucous edge. Anyone who has ever inhabited a barracks will know the original song ‘All the nice girls love a candle’. And Oliver? You will have to see the heartwarming end.
Kay, with this, Morning Glory and Punchline to name just three plays recently mounted, carves out a unique space as a writer on fringe, drag, stand-up and often isolated performers undergoing a crisis.
John & Thomas at 50 minutes could easily run as part of a double bill, perhaps with Morning Glory. Kay, who knows how to drive a work to its fullest, will surely return to it, and with it. As it stands (we won’t go there, nor to “blow” please), the one-act work mostly keeps up its tensions and is blissfully touching, defiant and more uplifting than a couple of falsies. A gem in the making.
