One pub. One evening. Two actors. Rather more than two characters. Jim Cartwright’s Two follows a bickering husband and wife behind the bar as a parade of customers passes through their pub, with the same two performers taking on the roles of landlord, landlady and the many regulars whose lives briefly unfold in front of us. Some are funny, some are lonely and some are considerably more complicated than they first appear. Then a small boy is left behind in the pub, forcing the couple behind the bar to confront the tragedy that sits beneath their constant arguments.
All Saints Elton Theatre Company presented Two from Friday 6th to Sunday 8th February 2026, directed by Rebecca Foster.
Written by Lancashire playwright Jim Cartwright, the play is an extraordinary acting challenge.
Kieran Hickey and Charlotte Crowley took on all fourteen characters between them, creating an entire pub full of people. Characters arrive and disappear rapidly, each with their own relationships, habits and private worries.
The pub becomes a place where little pieces of people’s lives are exposed. A conversation over a drink can be hilarious one moment and unexpectedly painful the next.
Holding everything together are the Landlord, played by Kieran Hickey, and the Landlady, played by Charlotte Crowley. Their constant sniping initially feels familiar and comic, but it gradually becomes clear that their marriage is carrying a grief neither has been able to address.
The arrival of the lost boy finally makes avoiding it impossible.
Cartwright combines humour and sadness without treating either as an interruption to the other. That feels particularly true to life, and particularly true to a pub, where one table can be celebrating while another quietly falls apart.
Our February 2026 production brought this intimate northern play to Bury and put its biggest challenge right in the title.
Two actors. An entire community. No pressure, then.