The Four of Us – A Buddy Comedy With An Edge

The Common Era presents the full-length comedy The Four of Us by Itamar Moses as part of the Dramatic Works Series at The Cultch – Vancity Culture Lab. The Dramatic Works Series was developed to produce previously published dramatic works. This is a great addition to the Vancouver Fringe Festival as it promotes and assists artists to present full-length plays, something that has been lacking from the festival in recent years.

The Four of Us is a kind of buddy comedy with an edge. Moses’ play introduces us to Ben (Alex Rose) and David (Jay Clift), two guys who have been buddies since meeting at Music Camp back in high school, having lunch.  Today’s lunch will be struggling playwright David’s treat as it is a celebration of Ben getting his first book published. I mean how can you not be happy for your friend right? Oh wait, David was recently working as a camp counsellor at the Music Camp where they met in high school to pay his bills and he just found out that Ben got paid over 2 million dollars for his first book…yet David is buying lunch…because a deal is a deal right. Happy?

The scenes of the play move between music camp where they met, Prague where they studied for a summer, Ben selling his first book, and David selling his first play.  We see the relationship between the two transition over the years as relationships do, especially with the the addition of a great deal of money and success. They both change into very different people than they were when they were younger. I believe this is where the name of this two man play is derived – The Four of Us. We see young serious Ben envious of young carefree David who was out there living life and not just writing about it, and older envious David who sees his buddy older Ben living the success he wants and David feeling left behind.

Changing a sound cue and a single picture on a simple set was the often effective way of transitioning scenes.  All of the props and costume pieces were located on tables at both sides of the stage keeping the actors on the stage throughout the play. On several occasions the scene changes seemed a bit long and this caused a bit of a drag in the pacing.  The sound in this show was very effective for the most part but the Indian Sitar music in the first scene was jarring and almost felt like it was music seeping into the theatre from outside.  Director Brian Cochrane kept the blocking very simple and still while keeping the visual picture of the play interesting.  He did a great job of utilizing the theatre and creating realistic conversations between the two men.

The show did feel overacted when it began but settled in as it went along. Overall both Clift and Rose put in solid, realized performances and inhabited both their character’s young and older selves. **I do have to mention that there is a theatrical twist at a point in this show that may be the reason that the actors appeared to be overacting…so in fact this might be spot on…you’ll have to decide.

You don’t have to be an artist to enjoy this journey and friendship. I mean we’ve all have a friend who has become a huge success at something in our eyes and we’ve had to deal with it right? Will you celebrate or be envious? In my case much like the play, my university buddy Andrew’s novel was published as a bestseller around the world to a six figure advance while I was performing a children’s show I wrote at the Winnipeg Fringe Festival. I was luckier than the guys in the play as my buddy chose to celebrate me as much as I chose to celebrate him. This is a great show for a guy to take a buddy to or to take a date if you want to expose how we men actually speak to each other.