The Plant @ 24:7 Festival

The Plant begins with a mystery: two men with numbers tattooed on their necks and wearing identical outfits (white tees, grey sweatpants) appear to be prisoners, trapped in a square cell with only their thin mattresses for furniture. Who sequestered them there, and why, is unclear. Whoever is responsible, however, they have a sharp eye for bringing together a classic chalk and cheese double act.

Aspiring novelist Leon (Alex Phelps) clearly considers himself one of life's great thinkers. At the start of the play he wakes up, rolls up his mattress and contemplates the walls of his cell: “Why are they here?” he muses. “To hold up the roof,” suggests Keith (Jonny Cordingley), his less philosophically-minded cellmate. When Leon starts boasting about his writings – the likes of Philip Roth and John Updike are his influences – Keith, not quite comprehending how great fiction works, eggs him into reciting his opus. Reluctantly, Leon humours him. Without too much arm-twisting, Leon improvises a yarn and casts himself as its lead. “I’m not main character material,” admits Keith, “more an interesting person the main character meets on their travels.”

Leon's on-the-hoof fiction begins as a downbeat study in the ennui of middle-class suburbia, with Leon playing a middle-management type on his commute to the office. Keith, who prefers his fiction set on Mars or Middle Earth, soon intervenes. “Nobody wants to hear a story about being late for work,” he says. Like the mischievous animator in meta-Daffy Duck cartoon Duck Amuck (perhaps the introduction of a comedy duck called Rodney half way through the play is a sly nod to that Chuck Jones classic), Keith keeps introducing outlandish twists to Leon’s tale, turning the story on a dime.

But Keith isn’t the only puppet master. Both characters seem to have the ability to shape each other’s performance. By pulling on invisible strings, Leon morphs Keith into whatever supporting character is required for his story: a fellow commuter, a passing motorist, or a nefarious CEO – the latter becoming the lead in a parallel story revolving around a ghost town and the mysterious plant of the title.

Both performances are joyous: as Leon, Phelps is dizzyingly verbose, with his knowing narration spinning from Rothian self-serious to Famous Five jaunty – or, as Leon puts it, “enthusiasm with just a dash of twat.” Cordingley’s performance, meanwhile, is more physical, his mime skills bringing life to Leon’s story as he throws his spindly frame around the spartan stage. Not to say his vocal performance isn’t up to scratch, with his Mr. Burns-like plant owner being the increasingly surreal fable's trumph card (“Tell me,” he says to his underling. “Was my reign Tyrannosaurusy?”).

Writer James Kerr admirably tries to tie these absurd tales together with a twist ending, but the dystopian denouement he comes up with doesn’t quite scan. This isn't make-or-break, though: like all good adventures of two mismatched travellers taking to the road, it’s the journey that matters most, not the destination. And this proves just as true when that journey takes place in the protagonists' own imaginations.