★★★★★
by Caitlin Hobbs on 14th August 2015
Leper + Chip will hold you by the throat and squeeze the tears from your eyes. Conall Keating (Leper) and Amilia Clarke-Stewart (Chip) power their way through this high-octane story of young love and loss in Dublin and each is as mesmerising as the other. Either of them could have easily held the stage on their own and to begin with, they do, stories intertwining until they meet and the lights flash up on an electrifying kiss.
Leper + Chip leaps the hurdle that many productions about young people trip on.
Meeting at a party one night, the two are thrown together by consequence only to be cruelly torn apart by circumstance. The pair play their own characters as well as a host of supporting faces. Most entertaining are Leper’s snivelling accomplice, Beaver, and Chip’s gluttonous sidekick, Pringle. The shifts in character are expertly signalled, indicated with sharp changes in posture, in facial contortion and in pitch.
The story is told at breakneck speed but it’s easy enough to keep up with them. Framed by just two rows of flashbulbs, the show’s energy is addictive. I could easily have watched another hour. The final third sees a lot of narrative rush through at once but it’s not disorientating and never feels cheap. Instead the pile-on of tragedy on tragedy pinpoints that feeling of loss of control that underlies, and ultimately dictates, the pair’s lives.
The beauty of the production is in its simplicity. It is just storytelling at its most basic but you’d be forgiven for forgetting that entirely as Keating and Clarke-Stewart drag you into their world through writer Lee Coffee’s script.
The script itself is a knockout; funny yet heartbreaking and shockingly intelligent, Leper + Chip leaps the hurdle that many productions about young people trip on. It’s genuinely cool. Leper and Chip aren’t half-arsed teen stereotypes with teen problems - they’re all too real and they’re here to be taken seriously.
★★★★★
Before the audience even sits down, the two young performers of Leper + Chip already dance and shadow box on the empty stage.
It's a sign of the kinetic and vibrant nature of the piece that the energy is flowing even before the first lines are spoken. But, once the play begins, there's barely a pause for breath as we're led through a parallel tale of two young Dublin teens and the events which bring them together.
Lee Coffey's new play is a beautifully performed slice of agonisingly simple but heartfelt vivacity. Conall Keating and Amelia Stewart spin the tale of Leper and Chip, the awkwardly nicknamed star-crossed lovers whose burgeoning romance begins in derision and steers ever more toward tragedy, beginning at a drunken house party which descends into a full on stramash between the mutual friends of each, then leading to unfortunate and dangerous meetings of both with more sinister members of the Dublin community.
It's a cleverly devised spectacle, with each actor taking up half the stage and the action passing back and forth between them, sporadically punctuated with a shout of "SMACK!" and a flash of the stage-lights.
By the time the final bows are taken, expect to be as exhausted, both emotionally and physically, as the talented cast enthral with this superb piece of modern fiction.
By Amy Merrigan on August 15, 2015
Chip is as tough as boots – “I know people think it’s horrible, girls fighting, but those f*cks aren’t from Dublin.” Her Da lost his job when she was seven and she’s been scooping him up from the pub floor ever since. Leper is infectiously cocky and crudely hilarious, ever on his wits and bouncing back. He wasn’t much good at school but had a soft spot for Shakespeare.
It’s boy meets girl, but could not be less conventional. Leper and Chip meet at a party, or rather during a fight at a party. They bump into each other the next day, during a chase through Dublin which involves stealing a child’s bike, legging it from a taxi and careering though a load of old folks on the bus. This boy and girl are from different sides of urban, brawling inner city Dublin. After the party that turns into a fight, their paths cross again and again.
Lee Coffee’s ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ new play is a whirlwind of a story told through a series of monologues and dialogues between the cast of two. Cleverly plotted and layered, we get a window into the pair’s lives over the course of 24 hours. Blinking rows of light bulbs frames the otherwise blank stage and sharp, minimalist lighting punctuates the pair’s roller-coaster of a tale.
Drenched in sweat by the end and speaking what feels like a million words a minute, Conall Keating and Amilia Stewart command the stage in a way that demands complete attention. High-octane doesn’t cover it; it’s the most captivating two-person show I’ve seen in a long time. An enthralling adrenaline rush of a story, Leper + Chip is the kind of show to make you both laugh and cry.
“Simple story-telling at its absolute finest”
Editorial Rating: 4 Stars: Outstanding
Sometimes the best thing to do with a play is to keep it utterly, utterly simple. Leper + Chip did just that with astonishing effectiveness.
As the audience enters, the two actors are alone on stage, pacing, as if gearing up for a fight. When the house lights dim, what follows is a high octane, turbo-charged, non-stop pummelling of drama, from two fine young actors.
The play follows 24 hours in the life of two young people from different sides of Dublin. They meet by chance at a party and their two social groups end up in a full-on brawl. The next day is a mad-dash tale of pursuit and rivalry as Leper and Chip try to come to terms with the previous evening’s actions.
It is structured as two interweaving monologues, enabling us to see both sides of the story from the night of their meeting. Each frank account goes on to introduce other friends and acquaintances, who, from just a few lines, seem as real as the actors on stage. As the story unfolds, we’re taken through feelings of pride, guilt, anger and desperation, all against a backdrop of the grittier side of Dublin.
The actors are alone on stage the whole time, with no set, props or complex effects to aid the story telling. The piece is driven completely by the energy and expression of Leper (played by Conall Keating) and Chip (Amilia Clarke Stewart), whose chemistry and personalities complement each other perfectly.
Leper is a real “lad” who thinks nothing of downing countless shots and hitting on older women for fun, while Chip is a feisty wee girl with a distinctly challenging home life. Both characters are incredibly likeable despite their many imperfections: their honesty and heart-on-your-sleeve attitude, which drive some of the more tragic consequences, make them true anti-heroes.
It really is a pacey piece that’s full of drama, and I was on the edge of my seat throughout. The quality of the writing (and directing) was such that the play never once seemed like it was written at all – indeed, the words fell out of the actors mouths so easily that it really felt like it was a true, if at times a little far-fetched, story. It has clearly been very well rehearsed and never once felt staged or unnatural.
Although at times just a little rough around the edges, these were two heroic performances – full of energy, conviction and real sensitivity to every aspect of the individual characters. Simple story-telling at its absolute finest.
By Matt Trueman
Published 08 August 2015
Lee Coffey's debut could be the violent child of Enda Walsh's Disco Pigs
Romeo and Juliet can jog on. Leper and Chip are shooting star-crossed lovers: two Dublin teens racing round the city at full pelt. Live fast, die young, they say. Leper and Chip live faster.
Back in 1997, Enda Walsh smashed the Fringe with his first play,Disco Pigs. Lee Coffey’s debut owes that play a debt. A fizzing two-hander made up of interlocking monologues, it has the same raggedy, turbo-charged energy of teenage lovers careering out of control and into each other.
Nicknamed after their physical deformities (his burned leg, her chipped tooth), Leper and Chip meet in the middle of a melee, a house party that erupts into mass cartoon violence. Call it love at first fight, but when the cops arrive, they scarper in different directions.
In a city like Dublin though, you only ever run into trouble – be that older women and their angry husbands or very bloody debt repayment plans. With every ‘SMACK’ in Coffrey’s script – whether across a face, an arse or a concrete floor – the stage lights up like a fairground. There’s a buzz to violence, after all.
It’s the characters you fall for though: Conall Keating’s tyro lothario Leper and Amilia Clarke-Stewart’s scrappy-go-lucky Chip. Even if Karl Shiels’ drama-blacks approach robs the characters of their reality, the two actors fizz like indoor fireworks.
It’s a Pro-Plus play though, all narrative momentum and tumble-turns of phrase, that misses the melancholy of Disco Pigs. Still, Coffey’s a talent: he writes in graphic novel high-definition and captures all the headrush of youth.
Billy Barrett
Edinburgh Festival Fringe theatre review: Leper + Chip, reviewed by The Scotsman’s Billy Barrett.
★★★
Two sweat-drippingly high-octane performances power this duologue about a pair of star-crossed lovers fighting through the mean streets of Dublin. Chip slaps away Leper’s first attempt at a kiss – smack! – which sparks a domino effect of violence narrated in graphic, foul-mouthed detail, each “smack!” that punctuates the action accompanied by a glaring flash of the back-lighting bulbs.
Eoghan Carrick’s lighting design deserves a special mention for this effect, which palpably intensifies Karl Shiels’ stylish, highly physical direction. Lee Coffey’s script is a thrilling laugh-out-loud ride through house party brawls and age-inappropriate sex, drunken parents and unsupervised kids, rolling headily towards a horrific climax.
But this is pulp violence, which doesn’t really feel pain. The stylised delivery, facing straight out to the audience, pounds through the plot so quickly that it’s difficult to get a handle on what’s actually driving our characters. This overt theatricality and lack of tonal variation mean that even the blazing performances of actors Conall Keating and Amilia Clarke Stewart aren’t enough to foster a proper emotional connection when the narrative takes a swerve for the sentimental.
Assembly Roxy (Venue 139) until 31 August / listing
Published in The Scotsman on 12 August 2015