BBC Radio 4 Extra, 9 January 2014
This short comedy had not just
one major twist but two. Set in a genteel seaside hotel, it was ostensibly about a middle-aged woman (Judi Dench) who
spent her life looking after her elderly mother. The task was so time-consuming and so unrewarding that the woman felt
she was neither appreciated nor had any real purpose in life. Her looks had gone; all she could look forward to was
the prospect of inheriting her mother's money when her parent passed away.
Enter her saviour, an unassuming man (Alan Bennett), who not only listened sympathetically
to the woman's complaints, but offered a tantalizing solution. If the mother could be disposed of in some convenient
way, then all the daughter's troubles would be over. The question was ... did the daughter have sufficient courage to
pursue such a course?
As the action progressed, however, the plot took two major twists, and we discovered that nothing was what
it seemed. The ending was totally unexpected, and the daughter emerged triumphant over everyone. If nothing else,
what we learned from Two in Torquay is that we should not accept individuals at face value, however innocuous they
might appear. The director of this 2003 production was Gordon House.
