Tonsils + Tweezers

It is almost the 10year reunion for Tonsils and Tweezers, two inseparable best friends who are the dynamic duo. While we see they were once united against the world, a painful event has come between them, and they are struggling with resentment and an unspoken distrust. Tweezers shocks Tonsils, and the audience, by asking “Have you ever wanted to kill someone”. This production takes the audience on a roller coaster of emotions, masterfully balancing the sharp, dark comedy with a profound emotional journey, using laughter to both diffuse tension and deepen the audience’s connection to the unfolding drama. 

Ariyan Sharma commands this production from Tonsils first opening line. He becomes the cautious and reflective lens through which we discover the painful past and unravel the tangled web which has been left. As we revisit this painful history, Tonsils questions, resists and unpacks the emotional consequences his friend Tweezers is living with. Throughout the play, Sharma seamlessly moves between being an integral part of the action, to recreating flashbacks to the past events, to breaking the fourth wall and narrating direct to the audience. His ability to control and command this stage and hold the audience in the palm of his hand showcases the depths of his talent.

Perfectly contrasting Tonsils, Victor Y Z Xu, brings to life the bold, provocative and emotionally volatile character of Tweezers. Xu drives the action of the play, confronting and challenging both the other performers and the audience. Instead of burying his anger and hurt from the past, he confronts it head-on, often in exaggerated, surreal and theatrical ways. Xu brilliantly balances the volatility with the vulnerability. As the play progresses, we see how unresolved pain from the past has twisted into extreme behaviour.

Sharma and Xu work together to perfectly capture the dynamic duo and the intense ebb-and-flow of the relationship. With sharp timing, physicality, and emotional shifts, they bring to life a friendship both devoted and fraught with tension, making the interplay between the characters feel authentic, unsettling, and compelling.

No play of this intensity would work without the grounding presence of Beth, played by Caitlin Green, and Mac, played by Toby Carey. Carey brings a grounding presence and a contrast to the heightened, emotionally charged Tonsils and Tweezers. His character highlights how some people can move forwards, whilst others have remained trapped in the unresolved emotions of the past. A highlight of the night is Green’s many cameo appearances as the story-telling narrator reading us a bedtime story of the boy with a gun. With a look, a smile, a shuffle of the curtain and comedic timing in spades, Green steals the show every time.

For the entire 65min of this play, we are being carefully navigated between imagination, memory and an uncomfortable reality. Lucy Rossen has directed her performers and crafted a stage show which immerses the audience in the uneasy blend of comedy and emotional unease whilst maintaining a whimsical juxtaposition with childhood memories. From the puppets to the shadow work, to how she has directed the minimal set to be used with creativity, Rossen has created a space where her actors are able to bring the audience along on the wobbles and darkness of the journey.  Together with Matthew Phillips sound design and Poppy Townsend’s lighting design we are transported into a journey of discovery, a journey that naturally makes us ask ourselves – Have you ever wanted to kill someone?

Sarah Webster

Photographer: Nicholas Warrand