Like Dolly Parton sang in 9 to 5: it’s enough to drive you crazy if you let it. Kicking off with that track, this playful wild west two-hander upturns hierarchical, swaggering cowboy culture and delves into what happens when you’re pigeonholed, lassoed by life and barely getting by.
First we meet a clown who plays second fiddle to a cowpuncher and longs for the glory of riding in the rodeo but winds up arguing with his own shadow. Then over a series of cleverly constructed, perspective-shifting encounters, which include even a bull’s eye view, creators Chloe Rice and Natasha Roland swap these roles, engage in power-play, flirt and fight.
They also step out of character to reflect on their own yarn and the obstacles faced by artists of minimal means – the rodeo ring suggesting a gilded showbiz arena not all can enter. Their observations on the costs required for even fringe theatre would have resonated at the Edinburgh festival – where this play won a Fringe First award last summer – and still do in this backroom of a pub, as venues struggle with increasing energy bills over winter.
This is a lean hour played out on an almost bare stage painted with a lone star. Angelo Sagnelli’s spectral lighting design switches between toxic green and infernal red as songs about deception and desire – Elvis Presley’s (You’re the) Devil in Disguise and Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire – are distorted, the latter sounding as if it’s actually aflame.
The show has a slower, softer footing than an adrenalised rodeo and at this measured pace some of the physical comedy – duets with shovels, sleight of hand with neckerchiefs, an extended bit of business with cigarettes – would benefit from greater precision. The wordplay in the script can also seem a bit scattershot but Rice and Roland, a longstanding double act from New York, have a fantastic rapport and are equally captivating. When the hour is rather suddenly up it doesn’t feel as if they have run out of road: you yearn to spend more time with this pair to fully unknot the issues of gender and power at stake.
At the King’s Head theatre, London, until 11 February.
