Theatre Review: Lovesong
Mark Wallace reviews Lovesong currently playing at the Lyric in Hammersmith.
18 Jan 2012, 10:20
Lovesong
“When I clean my teeth, I always clean them twice.” So says Bill, a retired dentist, wistfully at the start of Frantic Assembly’s new production Lovesong.
The announcement of his obsessive approach to such a mundane task sets the terms for the next 90 minutes. He cleans his teeth carefully because he wants them to survive in the ground for archaeologists to one day uncover and study, carrying out even a day-to-day chore with the prospect of the far future looming over him.
Lovesong (written by The Iron Lady screenwriter Abi Morgan) is a play based on the entwining of the past and present, under the shadow of the future. It follows an elderly couple, Maggie (Sian Phillips) and Bill (Sam Cox), in their old age – living together in the house where they started their married life, now facing Maggie’s terminal illness and the blizzard of pills and doctor's appointments it brings with it.
At every turn they are haunted, warmed and hurt by the memories of their younger selves (played by Leanne Rowe and Edward Bennett), who inhabit the same living space. Staged simply in the kitchen, bedroom and garden of their home, the production cleverly choreographs the modern Maggie and Bill accompanied by their youthful shades.
As in real life, the smallest act brings memories flooding back – opening the fridge, Bill finds his young wife emerging to embrace him; holding her husband in bed, dying Maggie finds he has sunk into the mattress, replaced by his younger self.
If the setting is mundane, the emotional landscape the characters explore is huge. Faced by the prospect of Maggie’s death, husband and wife look back on their young love, infidelity, financial troubles and childlessness. The angled projection screens which form the backdrop to the set place their lives in an even more vast context, showing flocks of starlings sweeping above them, stars floating through space and the smudged outlines of the ancient cave paintings from Lascaux.
While their past increasingly merges with their present, both are haunted as much by the future – his of life alone, and hers of death – as they are by their history. The rushing flocks of starlings signal that the day is coming to an end, and with it a darkness which is more troubling than even the worst of their memories.
Lovesong plays the audience’s emotions remorselessly and artfully – well acted, imaginatively staged, accompanied by film and sound montages that draw you in so deeply that an interval would have been impossible. The physical theatre elements, which I had been sceptical of beforehand, allowed the young and old characters to act out their dreams and lost hopes in front of us.
The characters are unique, but the flow of their lives is universal. I found myself thinking of my grandparents as I watched the elderly couple facing illness and decline. At the same time I identified the struggle of the young Bill and Maggie to stick together into an unknown future with experiences of my own. From the overarching themes to the minutiae of Bill and Maggie's interaction, this is a play which inhabits real life in ways that I could not help but recognise.
Prior to seeing Lovesong, I had never wept in a theatre before. Given the beauty of the play, I am not ashamed to say that I have now.
Lovesong is on at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith until 4th February. http://www.lyric.co.uk
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