Having been forced by dubious weather from the Medici Court to the Indian Char Bagh Garden, Actor/Writer/Director David Woods explains with a casual confidence, that the venue will bring some challenges. This is immediately accompanied by a passing helicopter. We are told we shall have to imagine certain sound, lighting and visual cues.

He needn’t have been concerned. He and fellow Actor/Writer/Director Jon Haynes deliver such a sharply focused, character driven story that the absence of peripherals only serves to heighten out immersion. If the helicopter returned, I didn’t notice.

In a series of brief vignettes, two brothers talk over Zoom. Each brother lives a very different life but also lives of many facets which creates a steady give and take of status and control.

The multi-dimensional character work is what makes the work truly beautiful even when at its most awkward moment. They love each other but they don’t always like each other, a relationship that extends to the unseen ailing mother.

They can be uneasy discussing ownership of a DVD but casually discuss embarrassing adolescent moments. There are resentments and disagreements but always a desire to maintain connection. Like many art creations of the Covid era, they explore isolation, physical and emotional.

Woods plays his character with active physical and facial animation while Haynes is reserved, almost repressed.

The wealthier brother references a jet setting, high culture life but his world feels every bit as small as his caregiver brother.

In the intimate prison of a computer screen, they both seem trapped, their mere existence at the whim of lagging connections and call interruptions.

There is a weight to the brothers’ world but also a lightness. The joy of explaining a TV show’s virtues. The bonding experience of critiquing awful food. The beauty in the grotesque. The affection for our loved ones even when they disappoint us.

So … is a masterfully constructed and performed two-header, pared down to its simplest elements and chock full of subtext.

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