Theatre - Lone Twin

Lone Twin are Gregg Whelan and Gary Winters, two friends who have been travelling the world on foot or by bicycle on and off for nine years, and stopping off en route to give performances. Their stage has been up a mountain in Norway, by the side of a river in Montreal, in a car park in Helsinki and on a boat in Switzerland. Tonight’s show, Nine Years is a sort of travelogue piece, which uses video footage and story-telling to bring together their experiences. How did it all start, then? I ask Greg Whelan when I eventually get through to him nerve-wrackingly near to deadline on Wednesday afternoon. “I’m sorry, we’ve been in the Welsh valleys all day”, he says immediately before settling in to answer my question. “In the show Gary says it was his idea but it was more that we kept being invited to places and then we were never in England so we just decided to keep on going. Now we’re like explorers returning to tell our tales of discovery”.
I ask what sort of reactions they had in different countries. “Audiences tend to revert to the national character”, says Whelan, “The Americans go barmy, the Australians are intrigued and the French like it to be translated into their language.” And their favourite? “Scandinavians and those towards the Arctic Circle. It’s harder for car-centred communities to understand why we’d take three days to walk somewhere but if you have to put on your skis to get to the local shop, it’s more understandable.” ER