Double Act – Southwark Playhouse

Writer: Nick Hyde

Director: Jef Hall-Flavin

Revelling in the tragicomedy of everyday life, Nick Hyde’s Double Act begins as a slightly showy narrated monologue for two actors with a sketchy student revue feel but evolves into a meaningful and rather surprising commentary on male mental health and the disappointments of contemporary living. Staged as two sides of one personality competing for precedence, the incidental detail and mundanities of urban living prove fruitful ground for this 90-minute show at Southwark Playhouse.

Waking up and deciding to take the day off work, the unnamed protagonist is determined to get to a particular destination. Shortly after 9am, while fending off unwanted calls from his boss and a chance encounter with a more successful former classmate in the street, the man still hasn’t made it very far, and as he navigates through the rest of his day, the end is all he wants to see.

Hyde’s story takes time to settle, slowly gripping the audience by degrees as a broad comedy approach in the early sequences that verges on stand-up gradually becomes more compelling when the purpose of Double Act becomes clear. Those rapid first scenes of narrated early morning routines and exaggerated encounters also develop into much longer, more introspective sequences as the character’s life is expanded for the audience and his role as a disappointing partner, poor colleague and absent son who never takes his mother’s calls give him greater depth and, by extension, greater purchase in his own story.

But Double Act never spends too long over-explaining itself to the audience, allowing the story to unfold itself and there is a reasonable dramatic jeopardy in what is described as a ‘last day’ being continually sidetracked by the petty distractions of city living. There are some great sequences about tube etiquette, the rage induced by elbow-jostling for the armrest and excessive manspreading that frustrate the protagonist even on this particular day. Later, a self-checkout proves predictably unreliable while a comedy dash for a train descends into a glorious circular argument with an exacting train conductor that is gratingly familiar.

Some of the longer sequences could advance more quickly including a long piece with an ex-partner in McDonalds that talks around the point for too long. There are a lot of techniques used to add variety to this 90-minute show including microphones, acrobatic clowning sequences and a mini stage frame designed by Christopher Eynde which might be rationalised to tighten the focus.

Staged as a two-person play with Hyde and co-performer Oliver Maynard in a single role, Double Act ultimately finds its deeper meaning as the split-personality approach becomes more pointed and the character’s self-doubt and insecurity are explored in a poignant finale. But it still needs a little more cohesion, a firmer hand to guide its shape through the day-in-the-life opener to that more purposeful outcome while balancing the lighter moments of observational detail with its eventual consuming darkness.

Runs until 5 April 2025