‘Take care of yourself,” one character grunts to the other as he holds him in a headlock. This image sums up Daniel Kanaber’s new play about friendship, mental health and masculinity. Affection, for these emotionally pent-up men, can only be expressed through aggression.
Under Three Moons follows protagonists Mike and Paul through their teens, 20s and 30s. Three nights, three decades, two friends. On a sixth-form trip to France, the schoolmates strike up an awkward friendship; in a surf shack in Pembrokeshire, they dream of escaping to California; and at Christmas 10 years later, the estranged friends pick up the pieces. In the dim, semi-anonymity of night, the two men can talk about things that remain stifled by day.
The structure of the play means that we only see small, disjointed fragments of Mike and Paul’s lives. The ghosts of parents and partners hover in the wings, always out of view. Beneath the suspended, glowing moon and flickering stars of Katie Scott’s set, the characters inhabit a place apart from daily routine. Crowded together on a small raised platform surrounded by darkness, it’s as if they are on an island, briefly marooned among the wreckage of their feelings.
Adam Quayle’s production takes its time, allowing for expansive silences between the friends. In these moments of quiet, both men seem to writhe inside their own skin – Mike (Kyle Rowe) fidgeting and spreading his limbs, Paul (Darren Kuppan) stiff and jittery. Yet the leisured pace begins to feel laboured as it goes on, stretching the material thin. The pressures of masculinity deserve to be interrogated, but this slight, slow-moving drama struggles to make an impact.
•At The Lowry, Salford, until 28 September.
