What should it mean to live one’s life as they wish? Should they seek recognition, or permission, if their identity clashes with society’s typical expectations. It is this concept, and the broad notions of identity politics, which is at the heart of Maria Speight’s intelligent play Two Strangers and a Clipboard.
Initially in a small court waiting room, the piece centres upon Sam (Gaby Coleman) and Gary (Matt Vickery), who at first glance have very little in common. Yet this is not society as we know it, and Sam is here for a court hearing desperate to be reassigned from logical Corpus to a more expressive Creare, the two classifications of people in this society, where behaviours, beliefs and professions are arbitrarily determined by the day of the week you are born on.
As Sam advocates for herself in front of the stoic Judge (Kimberley Ellis) and the conflicted court Chaperone (Lucy Forker), the piece deftly and cleverly, despite its thinly veiled subtlety, critiques the identity politics which is fiercely explored in society today. Sam’s hearing is handled with great care in Speight’s smart script, refusing to fall into clickbait cliches and instead focusing successfully on Sam’s sense of self, and security.
Coleman is superb as Sam, crafting the character with great care and control, balancing Sam’s defiance and determination with a gentle and vulnerable subtlety that allows the play’s powerful ideas to permeate through her. Coleman’s chemistry with Vickery is superb too, with her calm assurance a neat contrast to Vickery’s fizzing Gary, whose outlandish stories and actions disguise his genuine generosity.
Vickery works hard to create Gary’s 90s child, emotionally-charged, character, and provides much of the humour in a script which succeeds in warmly disarming audiences with gags before reiterating its clear message. His love of Oasis is comparable to Sam’s love for ‘retro’ music, in a simple yet effective way to explore the similarities, rather than differences, between human beings.
Forker’s Chaperone and Ellis’s Judge are also well used in Speight’s script. As figures of the state, it would be easy to make this roles one-dimensional and critical of Sam’s wishes, yet both performers, under Nicky Diss’s careful direction, are given opportunities to, with varying degrees of volume, explore their own criticisms and understandings of the problems with labels.
While Speight’s script gets a little boggy towards the end, Two Strangers and a Clipboard is a hard-working and slickly constructed piece of theatre which shows terrific restraint in conveying its message without imposing upon its audience. Sam’s hearing ends with her plea for recognition, rather than permission, to live as she desires resonates, in a poignant and moving moment that captures the maturity of the piece.
