Two Little Pigs begins with a break-up over cheesecake. We scarcely meet the couple Mark (Caleb Hughes) and Martha (Caitlin McEwan, who also wrote the script) before Martha departs the story, to Mark’s cruel parting jibes.
But McEwan is back almost immediately, in the guise of a live pig that the clean-eating, ever-self-optimising Mark has purchased to harvest its cells in order to grow strictly production-controlled bacon. All only a slight departure from your traditional relationship dramedy so far. But then the pig starts talking about the feminist existentialist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir…
Two Little Pigs immediately brings to mind the work of American playwright and film director Neil LaBute, with its intersection of feminism, vernacular language, and the prominence of porcine references, but goes far deeper and stranger in its metaphors. Mark and the pig quickly settle into a type of relationship, with his ecstatic pleasure in feeding her meals, and hers in consuming them, standing in where sex would be (at least, I hope this is all still metaphorical).
The story unfolds on an appropriately peach-toned set, with ominous sausage-like cushions in the rafters. It’s a stylised touch that helps the surrealism go down well. Deft use of lighting marks shifts, and visually brings out the sinister aspects when Mark pursues his body-sculpting looksmaxxing to the soundtrack of manosphere influencers.
The pig costume itself is absolutely wonderful, though it’s difficult to separate this out from the terrific physical acting of McEwan, engaging in just the right amount of snorting, snuffling, and scrabbling. The creeping, sliding, gradual merging of roles between the pig that knows more than it should, and the absent Martha, is perfect.
McEwan’s script humanises Mark, giving a great deal of sympathy to the arguments of what is essentially (though inconsistently, which is another issue) an antihero. It prevents him from being a cartoon villain, and the approach largely works, except for one scene in which he goes too far into viciousness. It’s simply not credible that the pig would defer to this anger rather than confront it, especially as she’d already stood up to his previous drunken outburst. On the other hand, the fact that I’m even sincerely arguing about the psyche of a talking pig speaks volumes to how successful the play is in developing its unlikely premise.
I don’t want to give away the ending, but there’s an ambiguity in it: it can be read either as dark, or as EXTREMELY dark. It isn’t a helpful equivocation, and the final punch would have more impact if the script were more definite.
These minor flaws aside, Two Little Pigs is tremendously clever, funny, and highly original. The unpredictable script never flags, and the issues that it raises are well-presented and thought-provoking. Though a few issues prevent it from being truly outstanding, this is nevertheless great theatre, and deserves a spot on your list of shows to see.
Listings and ticket information can be found here
