Riverside Studios serve up a slice of the Deep South

In the absence of any culinary skills, I’ve found that eating one’s dinner whilst watching MasterChef, can often make the experience a little more palatable. Through years of pretending that my toast was a main of spider crab thermidor accompanied with mussels, foraged sea vegetables and a side of chips, Gregg Wallace has hammered into me an appreciation of the infamous notion of ‘flavour combinations.’

This month, Riverside Studios serve up two plays that on paper might seem to perfectly compliment each other, but in truth, would probably raise even Michel Roux’s eyebrows. America’s Deep South forms the backdrop to both Blind Date and 27 Wagons Full of Cotton, the former being a tongue-in-cheek vignette that looks at a teenager’s resistance to her prissy aunt’s efforts to find her a date and the latter a somewhat brutal tale of two rivals in the cotton industry.

Horton Foote’s Blind Date lampoons the traditionally strained teenager/parent dynamic with a cast of staple characters that are immediately familiar even through a Tennessee drawl. Centred around a farcical date between the surly Sarah Nancy and her aunt’s proposed suitor, Felix, we see the tensions that arise when family members’ aspirations for each other don’t wed together. Despite a mundane text, the cast breath real comedy into the piece: Sebastian Knapp’s delivery of the gawky and obtuse Felix opposite the unimpressed Sarah Nancy sticks in the mind as a highlight. The performances of Francesca Fenech and Louise Templeton, as Sarah Nancy and aunt Dolores respectively, strike a tender balance between both being victim and aggressor.

As the evening outside grows darker, the second half inside follows suit. Tennessee Williams’ 27 Wagons Full of Cotton shares the more sombre story of cotton mill owner Jake’s sabotage of a competitor’s mill and the subsequent revenge exacted upon him after his wife spills the beans. The emotional tussles between man, wife and rival form the fabric of the piece, typical of Williams’ better-known works, and despite using the same cast in an identical setting, the performance doesn’t suffer from over-similarity. Ross Ericson portrays Jake with a gruff machismo, all the while striking a uncanny resemblance to Andy Parry (to those who that means anything to), and Sebastian Knapp impressively metamorphoses from his pre-interval Felix to give a slick performance as the slimy Viccaro.

It’s clear to see the why at first sight these two plays would make suitable bedfellows. Both analyse the damage that springs from a lack of compassion, ranging from the niggling frictions of daily life seen in Blind Date to the earth-shattering single events that change life irreversibly in 27. But the two go about it in very different ways. The first has a levity that seems at odds with the grave tone of the second, to the degree that you feel a noticeable shift in atmosphere right from the start of the second half. Individually the two halves are well-formed entities and, whilst I admit they would be too insubstantial to stand alone, together they seem somewhat incongruous. Cocoa and partridge ravioli served with demi-glace and beurre noisette may not go down too well with pan-fried fillet of gurnard and octopus pease pudding but it sure beats a Milkybar yoghurt in front of BBC Two.

Blind Date/27 Wagons Full of Cotton runs at the Riverside Studios until November 13