Some Thoughts on Trevor Rhone's "Two Can Play"

In the play "Two Can Play", a Jamaican couple, comprised by Gloria and Jim, is facing several challenges during the course of a time of political warfare in their home in Jamaica. These thoughts are not about the setting, but rather focus on the gender roles these characters partake as they go about their daily lives amid this setting. By getting a general overview of their gender roles, Jim would be a chauvinistic man with a rather low self-esteem, whereas Gloria would be a woman who knows her worth, but that didn’t demonstrate so until she started partaking in the various conflicts of the play. Jim makes claims such as being ‘general of the household’, brave, sacrificed for the family’s wellbeing, as well as being a good and attractive husband for Gloria. These here are claims about himself that would make him fit the traditional and chauvinistic male figure concept. But, as the action progresses, these claims are already crumbling, revealing his actual blunt and true chauvinistic attitude.

Starting with the ‘bravery’ part, at the start of the play, the couple is trying to sleep during a night of political violence. Jim is really afraid of their home being attacked, and in order to sleep he has resorted repeatedly that night to sleeping pills. Later that night, the interior of the house gets unbearably hot, and he’d rather turn on a fan and increase their already delayed electricity bill rather than open a window. Gloria then questions him why didn’t he agree on moving away much earlier in the crisis, and he then claims he’s not afraid and that they don’t have the resources to move away anyways. He claims to be ‘the general of the house’ and yet he’s ‘quick to panic’ when facing tense situations; as evidenced by how he was almost experiencing a nervous collapse upon them having to handle a wrong visit of some police officers who were looking for other persons. They (the couple) counterfeited some money to pay for their expenses for the emigration and hid the money preventively in order to avoid being captured, even if casually. Gloria had actually hidden the money in the toilet, but kept it safe by not flushing and having the bank notes on a plastic bag. Jim collapsed crying, believing the money they had counterfeited was lost to the pipes of the sewers, since he requested Gloria to flush it away in order to avoid capture.

Regarding what he has done for the family, this comes up when they talk about their children, whom they smuggled into the USA since the start of the political upheaval in order to ensure their safety and economic opportunities. In the past, he did provide money for them to get an education back in Jamaica, but providing money (and not exclusively, as Gloria also has worked earning income for the household) does not make for a genuine dose of sacrifice for the family’s wellbeing. To contradict this claim, there’s his ineffectiveness to run household chores as well as his relative unresponsiveness when it came to health emergencies, such as the one preceding his father’s death. Later on, after Gloria returns upon achieving a marriage to gain U. S. citizenship, they get entangled in additional discussions and realizations. In this interaction, Jim tells Gloria he did have some cooking experience; and yet he doesn’t cook at the house. Nor he cleans the mess caused by the water bottle he dropped the night his father died. He also doesn’t know how to wash the dishes, and even isn’t being the one to provide care for his father, and it’s Gloria who has actually done so.

Then there’s his claim to be a good and attractive husband to Gloria is countered by his possessive attitudes towards her, his blunt jealousy when they’re working with the marriages for U. S. citizenship, his lack of attention to details and even his infidelity to Gloria. First, we get to know his infidelity, as it can be inferred by some phone calls he has with a person, most likely a woman, with whom he spends Tuesday nights with, dining the best ‘pea stews he has ever eaten in his life’. Parallel to this pleasant extramarital experience, he loathes Gloria for not ‘feeding him’. During the various years of their marriage, much of their marriage has been him demanding Gloria to feed him; and in the times he gets food from her, especially during the times of scarcity brought by the political warfare, he gobbles up the leftovers Gloria had spared to share with him for dinner, and then asks for more food while she hasn’t dined. He also loathes her for she having painted her nails, to which she replied ‘I haven’t done anything for myself for twenty years!’ as a testament of his inattentiveness to her. Jim also fails to pay attention to his wife, as he often shuts her up by saying “you’re just chatting nonsense”—indeed a lack of attention to details. Last, there’s the way he tries to ‘claim her back’ with sexual intercourse. His bluntness and possessiveness achieved to turn her off enough so that he stopped altogether his approach.

Despite all of these events, as well as some other ones, the experiences and realizations these conflicts brought had made them realize, especially in Jim’s case, how they haven’t stood up to their marital life expectations. They then agreed to start anew their relationship, and Jim promises to himself to meet up to these expectations. That day, their oldest son, Paul, calls them by phone. Jim used this moment of family rejoice to request his son to not commit the errors he has when it’s his (Paul’s) time to start his marital life. Getting back to Jim, this promise also reveals he had to admit he fell low enough to fit practically all of the classical chauvinistic behavioral profile: blunt, selfish, lazy, inattentive, lustful and too much looks and too little essence.