Ella Caldwell and Paul Ashcroft in Love, Love, Love; Photo by Jodie Hutchinson
The place is London, the year is 1967. The first summer of love is about to hit and the world is about to change forever, and loosening sexual and social politics are at the forefront of everyone’s minds.
Straightlaced Henry (Jordan Fraser-Trumble) is only 23 but is still part of the old guard. He has a good job, listens to classical music and definitely doesn’t smoke weed because it’s illegal. His brother Kenneth (Paul Ashcroft) is just four years younger than him, but at 19 is excited by the imminent social change afoot. He loves the Beatles, smokes pot and feels sexually liberated. He revels in the fact his brother thinks he looks like a ‘poof’ in the robe he likes to wear around his brother’s flat that he’s bunking in. Henry has been seeing a girl called Sandra (Ella Caldwell). Ella considers herself part of the new wave, the 60s counterculture that is going to change the world. The night he brings her round to the flat everything changes, to the soundtrack of Procul Harem.
As usual, Red Stitch manages the tiny theatre space enormously well. Sets and set changes are clever and effective, suggesting the world outside the stage, and conveying time and place economically, as does the small cast of only four, who do an incredible job of portraying characters across decades.
Bartlett has pinpointed important times in UK history and The Stone Roses is the soundtrack to the second act. The time is somewhere in the early 90s and the idealistic hippies have become self-absorbed, middle-aged bores with two children, Rosie and Jamie, played splendidly by Jem Nicholas and Rory Kelly.
When we fast forward to the present day for the final act, Rosie has turned into a bitter, conservative 30-something and her brother has discovered rave, iPhones and altered states of consciousness. The family implodes in a gross, self-absorbed bang.
It is the terrific, humorous performances by Ashcroft and Caldwell that really make this play. In Love, Love, Love, writer Mike Bartlett has written a play that is both enormous and domestic in scope, effectively writing characters that summarise entire political and social movements across 40 years.
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
By Mike Bartlett
Director Denny Lawrence
Cast: Paul Ashcroft, Ella Caldwell, Jordan Fraser-Trumble, Rory Kelly & Jem Nicholas
Lighting Designer Clare Springett
Set Designer Jacob Battista
Costume Designer Sophie Woodward
Red Stitch Actors Theatre, St Kilda
5 June – 4 July
