New light was cast on David Eldridge’s 2017 play Beginning by last year’s sort-of sequel, Middle. These two-handers don’t concern the same characters but, as portraits of burgeoning romance and seasoned marriage respectively, they each gain emotional resonance from the other.
Both find a couple in the small hours, weighing up relationships. Middle has spilt blood, broken crockery and affection souring into acrimony whereas Beginning is all ketchup stains, frothing lager and heady anticipation. If the second play presents an overgrown lawn of a marriage, Beginning is about tender green shoots.
