Ben
Brantley

June 21, 2013

I certainly can’t defend it as a cohesive or entirely original work of art. By the end of its much weaker second act, when its symbols overpower its people, it has come to feel like a goulash of avant-garde leftovers. But if acted by the right performers, as it is here, “The Two-Character Play” has a power that cuts deep. Williams, who seems to have been in a state of nervous breakdown much of the time he was writing it, might have been just venting here. But what he’s venting is the accumulation of a passionate and obsessive life in the theater, a place that was both his refuge and his torture chamber. Ms. Plummer and Mr. Dourif’s Clare and Felice occupy this prison and playground with the mad assurance of people who were born in a trunk and will no doubt die there, too.