Review by Simon Jenner, March 24th 2025
Death & Co. The Laurel and Hardy of Suicide, the Little and Large of it (the Little in this case). Billed as “a darkly comic battle of wits between one man’s thoughts on his last day alive” Nick Hyde’s Double Act starts, luckily, quite early. Directed by Jef Hall-Flavin at Southwark Playhouse Borough’s Little, till April 5th, it transfers from its premiere at the Lion & Unicorn in January, where it won an OffCom Award, and was nominated for a Standing Ovation award. Of course it’s funny. And like death, peculiar.
Nick Hyde, and Oliver Maynard Photo Credit: Tanya Pabaru
Twin halves of the same man, Nick Hyde and Oliver Maynard shuttle back and forth between trying to ignore calls from his boss till he can’t, the same with his mum. But he needs to sashay round (very) ex schoolmate, smarming financier Fabian, talk with his ex-girlfriend at an acrobatic Macdonald’s lunch; and two strangers come unbidden. As if they might recognise something.
It’s a play that develops before your eyes over 90 minutes. Originally a Mountview drama school project, this begins fringe-y, attuned to pub theatre. But as physical comedy develops, so does the seriousness. Especially over the last 30 minutes that takes it past injury time for a fringe show in any case. And there’s a kind of injury here. By the end, first on a train with a kindly woman illustrator, then climactically on a hilltop at Eastbourne, lights dimmed and two people conversing, this is near tragedy. Pierrot has gone.
There’s more to Hyde’s critique too than suicide being the greatest cause of death amongst men under 50 (charities Body and Soul, Trinity Homeless Projects and Mind are now partners of the show). He touches on root causes: alienation, ‘bullshit jobs’ in David Graeber’s phrase, the cog-worker who wants to illustrate children’s books but in reality is in a job – IT analyst – he doesn’t even understand the function of. Hyde’s framed this as lapping round the comedy, but it’s there. Post-capitalist realism.
Nick Hyde, and Oliver Maynard Photo Credit: Tanya Pabaru
Playing on traditional good and bad angel, Hyde and Maynard play out the 28-year-old’s inner war snagged with crushing disappointment at his life. Though Hyde’s often the devil’s advocate, the angel in Maynard can swap over, playing the man ambushed with a variety of displacements to slow the journey down. Clearly whatever the stated aim, the something-settled matter of suicide, it’s not been approved by every atom. And a mighty atom or two fights back. It’s particularly effective since fluid identity, not only of the inner pair, but outward characters, morph into and out of range. This is about how identity itself is evanescent. So why knock it on the head as an indivisible failure?
Hyde and Maynard match in subfusc stripey shirts, like a couple of grey-pencilled Watteau Pierrots. They’re leaving a life that’s off-colour but want to put some pink in their cheeks before they go-go. Starting around 8.15 after breakfast they begin an odyssey to Eastbourne. But it’s a bright day on March 5th, and despite the work calls that come in, they’re enjoying this brisk, still chilly day. Like Cavafy’s ‘Ithaka’, they’re saying “do not hurry the journey in any way” and taken out all their savings en route, £2,000. This leads to a few complications.
Not with obnoxious Fabian, taken by Hyde himself, as Maynard Jekylls round this monster of faux-bonhomie strayed out of Mike Bartlett’s Bull. Hyde’s political edge kicks in as he repeatedly badgers Fabian over exactly how much he earns; which infuriates the big-shot. Either it’s not enough to sound impressive, or he’s dimly aware it’s obscene. Most of all it isn’t done.
Slowly Christophe Eynde’s set design emerges too. There’s red curtains parted to show a shiver of mirrors split vertically. Lots of divided selves there then, and (naturally) drawing in the audience. This takes on greater force as paradoxically lights dim – designer Holly Ellis makes subtle poetry of the latter half of the show. Frederick Waxman’s sound is warmly ambient and unassertive. Except with a maddeningly memorable earworm: a piano piece riffing on minor-keyed Poulenc.
Nick Hyde, and Oliver Maynard Photo Credit: Tanya Pabaru
The big clown moment consists of about 50 MacDonalds’ boxes, a couple with real burgers and fries in them. They’re teetered in and out, collapse, are rebuilt, are finally hurled backwards. The man has urgently called up his ex, principally to validate him as not a coward before he acts, something he has to withhold. As they talk, even eat, it’s clear his self-obsession has driven her away then and even as a friend, now. Her final lines are valedictory in the extreme.
It’s that meeting that moves the goofy – and rather undernourished despair – to the gaunt. Two more pivotal encounters – the kindly woman illustrator on the train who rescues in one way; then the Welshman on the clifftop.
Nick Hyde, and Oliver Maynard Photo Credit: Tanya Pabaru
Nick Hyde, and Oliver Maynard Photo Credit: Tanya Pabaru
I’m reminded of the very fine poet Maggie Sullivan, whose new (Waterloo) collection By Way of Reply covers her sister’s death and mother’s suicide. She remarks on her mother’s note. “’Believe it or not, I love you terribly.’/Believe it or not, we would have settled for that.” What will Hyde’s 28-year-old settle for? A cliff-hanger? Consummate performances, beautifully synched, and balefully hangdog too. Do see this timely, painfully funny, and absorbing new play.
Stage and Production Manager Jasmin Meara Wall
Nick Hyde, and Oliver Maynard Photo Credit: Tanya Pabaru
