Coventry’s Belgrade Theatre this month hosts the UK premiere production of writer Roddy Doyle’s bittersweet comedy Two Pints. The show takes us into a Dublin pub where two men chat over the heads of their Guinness. And while they debate the merits of football players and where the prostate is located, they are also pondering the bigger questions of life and mortality.

Two Pints features actors Anthony Brophy and Sean Kearns as the men who are known simply as One and Two who meet over a few nights watched only by barman Raymond – and, of course, the audience.

“It’s pure Roddy Doyle,” says Sean. “This is a very funny play but it’s also quite moving and very tender. It basically deals with the male inability to communicate on an emotional level - but surprisingly these men do that, and they are probably unaware that they are doing it.

“We are literally just sat at a bar talking so the challenge of that is to get internal choreography and an emotional choreography. Hopefully when people come out of the show, they might think there was a lot of movement in it because there are loads of gear changes and shifts.”

Two Pints began life as a series of hugely successful social media posts created by Doyle, writer of the best-selling Barrytown Trilogy of The Commitments, The Snapper and The Van. He then re-wrote the social media posts as a play which was premiered by Dublin’s Abbey Theatre in 2019. Doyle has now updated the dialogue for this production and has been very involved in the new iteration which is directed by Sara Joyce in the Belgrade’s more intimate B2 space.

“We had a conversation with Roddy Doyle early in rehearsals and he said these are guys who probably don’t work together, they don’t play golf together, they don’t go to football matches together,” says Anthony. “This is where they meet, it’s their confessional in a way, they go into the pub and know each other will be there. It’s a safe space for them. They rip into each other and they aren’t terribly nice to each other - except actually they are.

“We had to point out to Roddy though that Two never puts his hand in his pocket for a drink which is a big problem for me. I’m the one with the big situation and yet it’s me who’s buying all the drinks!”

Both actors have worked with Doyle before - Anthony in a stage version of Doyle’s novel about domestic abuse The Woman Who Walked Into Doors and Sean in the original West End production of The Commitments. And, says Sean, the Dublin-based writer has a special talent for capturing human experience.

“I don’t think anybody quite writes in the same way as Roddy does, the timing of jokes but also that lovely underlying sadness and darkness which says a lot about where people are while still being funny.

“What’s really interesting about Two Pints is that it’s full of non-sequiturs. It’s like normal conversation where people jump in and cross each other and then they will pull you up on something you said five minutes ago. We’re both characters where one says something and the other is like ‘what, where did that come from?’ But that’s what happens in conversation - especially when the pints are flowing.

“These two characters are not performers, they are not saying things to try and be funny, they are talking out of honesty and a real place. Sometimes they will realise they have said something which has caused the other offence and sometimes they will apologise whole-heartedly - and sometimes not. The story they are telling is universal - that story of men’s inability to be emotionally alive. It’s raw and it’s real.”

The show may be called Two Pints but in fact it calls on the actors to down five pints each during every performance but, they assure me, they’re drinking alcohol-free Guinness Zero.

“I don’t think I would make it past the first two days if we were drinking real Guinness,” laughs Anthony. “I’d fall off the stool or into Sean. I might start saying Sean’s lines or Sean might start saying mine.

“But the difficult thing is you’re trying to drink five pints and every time you go to neck a drink you’re talking so when you do get a break you end up necking the whole pint in one go so you can get on with your lines.”

And a further challenge is one well-known to anyone who has downed a lot of liquid.

“On matinee days we’re drinking ten pints!” says Sean. “The biggest fear is that you’re halfway through an act and you’re going ‘sorry but I need the loo!’ We were joking that, because we are behind the bar and the audience can’t see below our hands, could we have a Shewee there! You have to think about these things as you can’t go ‘can you just hold it there and talk amongst yourselves for a minute?’  It was more daunting at the very beginning when we were ‘seriously, we have to drink this amount?’ But practice makes perfect.”

Sean and Anthony first met nearly 30 years ago when they both worked on the film The Informer directed by Jim McBride but Two Pints is the first time they’ve done a play together. And now they are looking forward to sharing the show with audiences.

“Sometimes people are afraid to go and see certain plays, people are very wary of going to see something like Beckett or Shakespeare because they think they won’t get it,” says Sean. “Whereas with this all you have to do is turn up, sit down and relax and this will unfold in front of your eyes. It’s incredibly accessible. You will go out of here with a smile on your face but you may have had a wee think as well.”

And Anthony adds: “I think audiences will have a really good time, they will really laugh, really be engaged. They will hear a voice on stage which isn’t talking down to them, it’s very real and it’s doing what I think the best theatre tries to do which is explore the triumph of the human spirit. It lets people celebrate being human together in all the facets that human beings are.”

Feature by Diane Parkes

Two Pints plays Belgrade Theatre Coventry from Friday 2 to Saturday 24 May