Award-winning Roddy Doyle is one of Ireland’s most beloved and celebrated writers, known for his razor-sharp wit and unvarnished depictions of his home town of Dublin. In this Q&A, Roddy shares all about Two Pints and its journey to the Belgrade.
1. Hi, Roddy! Tell us a bit about yourself and your work.
I’m from the Northside of Dublin, and virtually everything I’ve written over the last forty years or so – thirteen novels, rakes of short stories, screenplays, and stage plays – has been set there. My first book, which I self-published with a friend of mine in 1987, was called The Commitments. The film, which I co-scripted, came out in 1991. I won a Bafta for that one! My fourth novel, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, won the Booker Prize in 1993. I’ve won nothing since; I peaked too early! My last novel, The Women Behind the Door, came out last year. I’m currently writing a novel inspired by my time as a secondary school teacher in Dublin in the 1980s – the joy, the madness, the chalk, the toilets.
2. We’re so excited to have Two Pints playing at the Belgrade for its first ever UK theatre production. For people who don’t know, what is Two Pints about?
The play is about two men who meet a couple of times a week in their local. They don’t know each other well outside the pub; they didn’t grow up together. But meeting, and chatting, is a vital part of their lives. One of the men’s fathers is dying in the local hospital. The first two acts occur after he has been up to the hospital, visiting his Da. The third act takes place on the day of the funeral.
3. What inspired you to write Two Pints? Was there a particular moment or conversation that sparked it?
I’d been writing short dialogues between the two men for years and posting them on Facebook. My father’s death – he was 90 – and the routine of going to the hospital to see him, observing the kindness and chaos of hospital life, watching him die in the company of my family, the grief; all of these experiences and feelings seemed like the material for a play, a play that my father would have enjoyed and that my mother did enjoy. Soon after this death, I had a long conversation with a man who’d been through a similar recent experience; in his case, his mother had died. By the end of the chat, I had the plot of the play.
4. Did you always imagine it as a stage performance, or did it evolve from your Facebook posts first?
The reaction to the Facebook posts was very strong. People told me that they almost welcomed the death of, say, a rock star, because they knew I’d write a Two Pints piece and stick it up on Facebook. A few producers suggested that I think about writing a play. I thought the success of the characters was dependent on the brevity of the Facebook pieces, until after my father died and I began to see the plot.
5. Why are the characters called One and Two and how do they know each other?
I didn’t want the dialogues on Facebook to look like pages from a published play or like a page from a school textbook. Also, when we know who we’re talking to, we rarely use their names: we know them already! It always surprises me when I read, or hear, characters constantly speaking each other’s names as they talk to each other. It always seems artificial – and a bit shite. Then, when I started working on the play, I realised that the actors would need to be able to distinguish between each other’s lines, so I called them One and Two. I could pretend that I got the inspiration from the two lads, Thing One and Thing Two, in The Cat in the Hat. But I didn’t.
6. Who is Raymond and why is he important to the story?
Raymond is the barman and is, therefore, vital. A pub with no barman can’t function; a pub with no bar staff is only a room. Also, in a way, Raymond is us, listening in, ear-wigging.
7. Why do you think it’s important for men to connect and chat about life in the way that they do in Two Pints?
As we get older, as some people retire, as more people work alone at home, it’s important to have excuses to meet. Women, I think, are better at this, at finding excuses to get together. Book clubs, for example – I don’t know one man who is a member of a book club. But I know plenty of men who go to the boozer, and it’s not all about the pints. The chat about football will often lead to other topics, and then there’s ‘the organ recital’ – the medical ailments and procedures. ‘Colonoscopy’ isn’t a funny word but the mere mention of it can produce equal measures of sympathy and laughter.
8. Why is Coventry the right place to showcase this story for the first time in a UK theatre?
When I was writing my first book, The Commitments, in 1986, I was wondering about the construction of the band – what sort of music they’d play, how many would be in the band, what would they be like. I thought it would be a good idea to have an older band member, someone with experience, and the inspiration for that came from a Coventry band, the Specials. Rico Rodrigues played the trombone in the Specials and, leaving aside the great sound that he created, I always thought it looked great, this middle-aged man surrounded by these energetic kids all charging around the stage. So I gave the Commitments an elder member, Joey The Lips Fagan, a trumpet player. The characters I write about have aged, as I have, and while the two men in Two Pints weren’t in The Commitments, I think they were probably at their gigs. So – in a way – they’ve come home.
9. The play has so many hilarious moments, what are some of your favourite lines?
I love when Two admits that he hasn’t read all of the Koran, just ‘a bit of it.’ I just love the idea of a middle-aged, even elderly, Dublin man sitting up in bed every night, beside his wife, reading the Koran.
10. How are you feeling about seeing your words come to life on a theatre stage with the direction of Sara Joyce?
It makes perfect creative sense for a young female director to be in charge of a play about men in late middle-age, and I know that Sara will do a great job. I always feel grateful when I see something I’ve written performed on stage, and I think I’ll feel even more grateful, to everyone involved, when I see it performed on a stage outside Dublin, in a different country – playing away from home, so to speak. It’s brilliant.
Two Pints runs from Fri 2 May – Sat 24 May 2025. Book your tickets here.