A Special Relationship Review

March 6, 2025

26th February – 22nd March 2025

Take Note Theatre, SmokeScreen Productions and Twilight Theatre Co. present A Special Relationship

You visit the theatre to escape reality. Trump and Starmer, Vance and Zelensky, Ukraine, Gaza, inflation, stagnation.

Yet here we are in a different reality, a cosy neighbourhood theatre in Chiswick, west London, to watch that much trumped (don’t excuse the pun) Special Relationship put to the test by two men.

“…(an) hour long welcome romp from reality…”

Is this a metaphor, you wonder, for the parlous state of Anglo-American relationships? Well, yes it is in this premier of a transatlantic comedy transferring to New York in May.

A wedding. Two dads. A gazebo. What could possibly go wrong?

It is the morning of the wedding of their children and British father Monty is hosting American dad Pete and his family. Everyone else has gone to the church for the wedding rehearsal but the two men have been left behind to put up a gazebo in the garden.

Communication proves challenging and not just because the instructions are in Chinese.

Can these two self-opinionated men from opposite sides of ‘the pond’ forge an alliance to construct the gazebo? Or will international detente collapse with the first gust of wind?

It’s certainly a comedy of errors as Monty (Tim Marriott), a crusty retired British Army colonel, tradition-bound, up-tight Englishman encounters plumber Pete (Brian Dykstra), an up-front New Yorker who favours exuberant hugs rather than handshakes and sports loud cartoon-themed bottoms and sloppy tracksuit top rather than conservative cords and blue sleeveless V-neck over neat checked shirt.

They are united in suffering hangovers as they face their flat-pack gazebo challenge in a garden of blooming roses bathed in morning sunshine.

But they are hopelessly divided by language and culture: French press v. cafetière; tent v. gazebo; baseball v. cricket; bathroom v. lavatory; public schools v. state schools.

‘You live in weird frigging country,’ reckons the brash Yank.

‘We are all on the same side now,’ is a line that brings hollow laughter from the audience.

Monty’s world is rooted in his past military career, serving in Northern Ireland, the Falklands, Afghanistan and Sierra Leone. The world of Tinder (how his daughter Rebecca met her husband-to- be Nicholas) and influencers (like his prospective son-in-law) is a stranger to him. As are hemp gummies and tattoo removal creams.

The two men at least agree on the orange President. ‘From time to time we all elect a bozo,’ concedes Pete.

‘We’ve had a few in our time,’ agrees Monty.

Tim Marriott, well-cast as Monty, hit on the idea for A Special Relationship when staying with a New York friend when they were both contributing to the Adelaide Festival Fringe.

In the programme notes we read of their late-night, jet-lagged chats and the confusion that ensued. Marriott recalls how he rarely understood all his friend was saying. ‘It wasn’t the jet lag, the lateness of the day or anything alcoholic. It was simply the failure of the language.

‘From the back of my befuddled brain I remembered a line from Churchill, or was it Roosevelt, or was it someone else entirely? Something about “two nations divided by a single language”?’

(In fact it was George Bernard Shaw who said ‘England and America are two countries separated by a common language.’ And in The Canterville Ghost, Oscar Wilde writes: ‘We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language.’)

Mitchell reckons America and Britain think of themselves as cousins with mutual ideals and outlooks simply because of both speaking English.

‘It makes little logical sense that a vast superpower of enormous wealth should really have much in common with this disintegrating island empire. America was once part of that empire, but threw us out, and we have been moving in different directions ever since.

‘Yet like family, we have a history of putting aside our differences and pulling together in a crisis. Like a family. Like cousins coming together at a family event. Like a wedding, perhaps…

‘As apparent political madness on both sides of the Atlantic played out, the idea of a metaphor, a fond recognition of our common ground, took shape.’

Marriott sought an American voice to co-write the comedy: Jeff Stolzer, who says: ‘I immediately saw the possibilities for a transatlantic comedy of misunderstandings. The language differences suggested two characters from very different backgrounds, that would create conflict and humor. Or is it humour?

‘I knew Tim and I would have a bloody good time writing it. And we did!’

As matched by the Tabard Theatre’s audience response to this hour long welcome romp from reality.