There is a quiet intimacy to Joe Eason’s words. He does not hide behind theory or distance. Instead he begins with the simple image that sparked Two Come Home: a young man, broke, stoned, scrolling alone on his couch. “I wanted the audience to just watch this guy scrolling on his phone for fifteen minutes,” Joe laughs. “Sounds nice and subversive on paper but ultimately not very engaging to watch, so that became like a hot sixty seconds of Evan being alone before the other characters disturb his peace.” That beginning set the tone for a play about ordinary queer life, messy and unpolished, but deeply human.

Joe talks about Evan with honesty and care. “I wanted a gay guy where sexuality is not really his issue. Now Evan has a lot of issues but being comfortable with being gay is not one of them. With its rural setting and difficult parents you might assume a struggle with sexuality was the obvious choice, but I felt that story had been told enough times. I wanted a character the audience would really root for but then feel conflicted about once his secrets come out. I was angry when I wrote Evan but like him, I was not angry about being gay. I was angry about being poor and ignored. I was angry about my own failings, about the world and my place in it. A place that felt inescapable.”

How do different parts of your life feed into your storytelling?
“You meet a lot of interesting people bartending and you see people at their highest and lowest. When I wrote Two Come Home it was because I wanted to see a story about someone like me. I want to see and tell stories about real people, about the beauty, tragedy and absurdity of normal life. Sometimes Two Come Home gets called a melodrama but I do not think there is anything in there that is more dramatic than things I have seen and experienced in real life. As for illustration, I am a very visual creator and my degree was in theatre design, so I am always going to use those skills. When I first started planning how to bring the show to life, I created concept art for everything: the set, costumes, even the poster. It helps me get my ideas down and test things before committing to anything physical or expensive.”

The play may be set in a small town, but its themes reach beyond geography. “There are so many aspects of queer life that are universal. Just because someone lives in the middle of nowhere does not mean their core experience of being queer is dramatically different from someone living in a big city. There may be less of an openly available community, maybe less anonymity in a smaller town. But having lived in both big and small towns, I think I actually felt most lonely when I was living in London. There are bigots and good people everywhere, there is loneliness and community everywhere. There are different privileges and pitfalls wherever you live.”

Where did the music come from for you?
“That is fun. Unexpected… maybe Star Trek. I have been introducing my partner to Trek so we have been watching all the series. Those nineties Treks had some great scores. Sitting and watching these shows and suddenly being hyper aware of the score because I was in the middle of scoring myself, seeing how it sits under dialogue or transitions between scenes, that was inspiration in an unexpected place.”

Quietland LLP, the collective of low income queer artists producing the play, is something Joe describes with warmth. “It is the best part of this whole project. We have so much fun together, it is such a great bunch of folks. We are all in it for the love of the work, for playing in the rehearsal room, for the beers afterwards, for putting on a great show for audiences. It is all I have ever known, the only way I know how to work.”

What surprised you most about audience reactions?
“Everyone loves the dad. They hate him, but they love to hate him. And he is a delicious character to watch, he is so machiavellian. I have worried that he might be too ridiculous, too much of a stereotype, but then I will encounter a homophobe in the wild and unfortunately that assures me that he is far too real. The bigger surprise is just how much it moves people. As a creative you always hope your work will reach people, but it is intense. I will be there, only a few feet away from the front row, singing the big song, and all I can hear is sniffs and sobs. And I am up there fake crying and in my head I am like, I am a liar, I am a damn liar, but I guess they are buying it.”

The thread of hope in the play comes from somewhere deeply personal. “You know what, it is so gay. It was my partner. When I first wrote Two Come Home back in 2019 I did not finish it, I did not know how. I was like, I will probably have to kill Evan or something. A couple of years later I decided I had enough of being miserable and alone. I put myself out there and asked someone to love me. I told him I just wanted to be happy. He was the first person to ever read the play and it was him that told me I should finish it and stage it. And that is how I found the ending, that is how I completed Evan’s character arc. We both started as angry, lonely, sad boys and ended up tired of it and just trying to be happy.”

Two Come Home has already travelled through fringe festivals and small venues, each version reshaped and rewritten. “We have come a long way. I think of 2024 and its fringe tour as one big long workshop. I have rewritten the score three or four times, endless line changes, new scenes, even a flashback that never made it to stage. A cop changed gender. Looking back it is a mess, but I think we have got a diamond out of all that work and pressure. It is so tight and polished now. Every single word has been dissected and interrogated. The story has always been the same, it is just the articulation that has got better. More overt in some places, more subtle in others.”

If you could put one line from the play on a billboard, what would it be?
“Oh my god. I want it to be something stupid like, Dragons bitch. But it has probably got to be Ashley the cop in her role as Greek chorus at the end: Happiness is a choice you know? So is misery. So choose.”

What song always pulls you back into a creative headspace?
“For Two Come Home it is Winter Campin’ by me. Tragically we could not make it work in the show, but it will be on the soundtrack. In general… I will just go gay and say Dead of Night by Orville Peck. So vibey, so simple, so gay.”

If you could invite any fictional character to see Two Come Home, who would it be?
Kermit the Frog. “He and Evan could sing Rainbow Connection together for the encore,” Joe smiles.

It feels right to end here, with an image that is both playful and tender, because that is what Joe brings to his work, a reminder that even in the heaviest places a little song can still cut through the dark.

Show Details: Two Come Home at The Cockpit

• Dates: Tuesday 2 September to Saturday 13 September 2025
• Times: Evenings at 19:30, selected matinees at 14:30
• Venue: The Cockpit, Gateforth Street, London NW8 8EH
• Tickets: £22.63 full price (including £1.63 fee), £19.54 concessions (including £1.54 fee)
• Booking: The Cockpit Theatre Website

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