All female theatre company Swipe Right Theatre return to the King’s Head with their 90s pop musical, ‘2 Become 1’. As you enter the auditorium, there’s an inconsolable twenty something sobbing alone on the floor while a continuous stream of messages from her mates are played on the answerphone … the final one saying they’re coming to get her …!
Charlie (Eliza Hewitt-Jones) the man hungry one, Molly (Kerrie Thomason) the slightly dim one and Amanda (Jessica Brady) the bubbly one all there to comfort Jess (Natasha Granger) the blubbering, recently dumped by her boyfriend one.
Not an overly complex plot – girls get together, girls go out speed dating, girls have a singalong or two … and that’s about it. Plenty of classic 90s tunes throughout and a host of cultural and pop references from the time – ‘Oooh you’ve got a Nokia’, and a liberal sprinkling of girl power of course! (Not really sure quite why there was a veiled reference to Scottish Independence in there too … )
The show is a comedy but sometimes the humour felt a little contrived. There’s one routine (and I’m sure there’s a technical name for it) where each of the ladies speaks in turn, cut off just as they are about to say something vulgar and the next person takes over, e.g. ‘flashing my c…’ quickly followed by ‘continuing …’ – this should have been a comedy highlight of the show but unfortunately the timing wasn’t quite there and it felt somewhat laboured.
The ‘My Heart Will go on’Titanic parody routine was enjoyable and worthy of a few laughs. All credit to Jessica Brady who really made the scene her own and was the stand out star of the show.
Condensing the show into an hour means there’s no real time to develop the story or to get to know the characters enough, making it all seem a little rushed at times.
It’s a fun enough way to kill an hour though and most of the audience seemed to love it. I was sort on the fence with this one but perhaps that’s because I’m more of an 80s man!
