CHRISTOPHER GRAY on a compelling new production of the comic two-hander at The Theatre, Chipping Norton

Marie Jones’s Olivier Award-winning two-hander Stones in His Pockets last graced the local stage 18 months ago in the vast space of the New Theatre in a production (directed by the playwrights’s husband) pretty much unaltered from its 1996 debut.

Now the play returns to the famously intimate interior of The Theatre, Chipping Norton – and thereafter to a series of even smaller village halls – in a fine new take on the work to mark its 20th anniversary. The Theatre’s boss, John Terry, supplies the firm directorial hand.

The production confirms my view that Jones has given us a modern masterpiece in her affecting study of a cultural clash at once comic and calamitous.

That it has much to say about stagecraft and the wonders of story-telling accounts for much of its excellence.

On one side are American filmmakers out to make a schmaltzy Hollywood romance in the west of Ireland; on the other the locals eager to pick up their £40 a day, and free meals, acting as extras. And for ‘acting’ read comic posturing, hilariously delivered between the huge disk lights of Samantha Dowson’s design.

That some 15 characters are played by only two actors was a necessary economy in the first production. The micro-casting set a template, becoming a principal selling point in the opportunity it gives to two actors to show their versatility.

Here Irish thesps Charlie de Bromhead and Conan Sweeny excel in the task, switching seamlessly from one role to another, some of them female, as in the former’s depiction of the simpering production assistant, Ashley, and the latter’s delicious presentation of film star Caroline Giovanni.

It is she who sets the tragic element of the plot in motion when she cruelly sends packing a drugged-up teenager who tries to talk to her in a pub.

Performances continue at Chipping Norton Theatre until April 16 (box office 01608 642350). Additionally, there will be a performance at 7.30pm this Sunday (8) at the Pegasus Theatre, Oxford (01865 812150).

The show can also be seen at 7.30pm on April 22 at Cassington Village Hall (01865 883512/881813); at 7.30pm on April 23 at Cornerstone Arts Centre, Didcot (01235 515144); at 7.45pm on May 26 at the Neighbours’ Hall, Great Milton (01844 279474); at 7.30pm on May 27 at Chesterton Community Centre (01869 250995); and at 7.30pm on May 28 at Ramsden Memorial Hall (01993 868222). 4/5