Two Chairs

BEN McVitie's "Two Chairs" is a quietly unsettling miniature of human connection, staged with the intimacy Malvern's Coach House Theatre manages so well.

 

On the surface it appears simple — two performers, two chairs and a conversation that gradually deepens. Yet beneath that simplicity lies something far more ambiguous, even disorienting.

 

It invites attention, rewards patience and ultimately leaves the audience with more questions than answers. McVitie, broadcaster and columnist, brings a spare, pointed writing style.

 

Every pause feels deliberate, every shift in tone suggests something concealed. Director Jane Lush, a drama teacher at Hereford College who also appears briefly as a nurse, shapes the production with admirable restraint.

 

She understands the power of stillness, allowing silence to speak as loudly as dialogue. In the theatre's close-up setting, this approach becomes a strength, drawing the audience into the emotional undercurrents.

 

The story centres on Dr Corbett, played by Iain MacKenzie, and Andrew Simmons, an inmate in a hospital, portrayed by Christopher Beckham. MacKenzie is well known for performances with several theatre companies while Beckham brings experience from the Edinburgh Festival and radio and television appearances.

 

Their contrasting backgrounds create a compelling dynamic. Dr Corbett is interviewing Simmons about his condition and one name keeps surfacing — Lucy.

 

Something happened involving her, something significant enough to haunt both men, yet the play refuses to reveal exactly what. The interview circles around the incident, touching it, avoiding it, returning to it again.

 

The audience senses guilt, fear, perhaps shared responsibility but nothing is confirmed. The uncertainty becomes part of the drama.

 

Then, in a bold structural shift, the actors reverse their roles.

 

The doctor becomes the patient, the patient becomes the interrogator. The conversation grows more emotionally charged. This reversal is executed with impressive clarity and both actors navigate the transition with superb control. Yet the effect is intentionally disorienting.

 

Are we seeing a psychological exercise, a memory, a hallucination or a metaphor? The play offers no explanation. By the decisive moments the questions are still unanswered.

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The name Lucy still hangs in the air, unresolved. The audience is left to piece together fragments, to interpret motives, to decide what might have happened. It is puzzling, even frustrating, but deliberately so. Two Chairs asks the observer to complete the picture.

 

MacKenzie and Beckham deliver performances of remarkable intensity while Lush's understated staging allows the emotional tension to breathe. This thoughtful, quietly provocative piece lingers long after the lights fade.

"Two Chairs" may be modest in scale but its exploration of what binds and breaks us and what we choose not to say can feel quietly universal. However, it leaves the mind buzzing, searching for answers it never quite provides.

 

Brian Owen
Reviewed Tuesday, August 11, 2026
Malvern Gazette