Image: I (honestly) Love You photograph courtesy Subiaco Theatre Festival.
I (honestly) Love You is a combination of the writer having one good idea, for example how about if you were forced to be honest in a relationship; and attempts to morph theatre into stand-up comedy which involve audience participation.
WA based award winning playwright Damon Lockwood writes, directs and stars in this Subiaco Theatre Festival performance and ultimately hams it up too much. Some neutral editorial guidance would have enormously benefitted this work.
With a central thesis that the two main characters, Belle and Lloyd (Talei Howell-Price and Nick Pages-Oliver) both have a highly unusual ‘psychological disease’ of not being able to tell lies, we are asked to tag along for the rocky road of their relationship. Because of course, all other relationships have faltered in the stark honesty of answering questions like – did you masturbate this morning? How about when you meet the future in-laws and the father immediately asks about your pornography viewing habits? There’s a bit of a theme here. Yes sexual digressions and peccadilloes are considered the most god-honest way of measuring truth telling. For contrast we get the more white lie territory of the couple played by Damon Lockwood and George Gayler to compare. He insists he loves coming to watch her play netball (thinking it would be all hot chicks and it is literally – he can’t cope with the sweat) but keeps lying to her that it is really the highlight of his fortnight. The unusual factor of what happens when the truth telling couple find they can lie to each other is the hook towards complicating why they can’t be together.
Truth telling examples that underpin the everyday are for example – that you stink when you drink too much beer; that the baggy green dress you wear around the house is unflattering and the much used prop on female insecurity ‘does my bum look big in this?’ answer always has to be a negative from a lover.
There are moments of imitating film clichés such as the sad faced protagonist with rain dripping down the window but is ‘subverted’ by having the actor pull funny faces to make the audience laugh mid step, which does not pay credence to the storyline. At the end when Lockwood plays a priest officiating at a wedding who pulls faces as an ‘aside’ to the audience we lose the value of what is being portrayed in the text. Hence you are left feeling there is no integrity to these characters and this is a ‘one idea’ play. It reminds me of the little kid doing more and more strange stuff because the adults are laughing.
The stage design by Cherie Hewson was quirky and fun with interesting use of silhouetting and blanket design motifs that left you pondering. Also the quick replay of all the events to date in the play was cleverly done. Overall the actors put a lot of energy into their performances but there was a lack of emotional integrity in their characterisations as the quick and superficial aspects of the performance were constantly highlighted.
There was a section of ‘fast forward’ with actors doing pretend slow motion acting to a mournful sound track. It finalises by several questions into the future i.e. whether true honesty will last when the husband wants a sleep in when the baby is crying. Ultimately everything about relationships – hook up, dinner date, meeting the parents, friends discussing your date – is meat to the comedic vehicle that is this play, and so it does nothing to add to our greater understanding of the intimacy, caring, loyalty or myriad other emotional states (like bearing guilt when you don’t always tell the complete truth to protect someone’s feelings) that make up the huge complexity of relationships.
The play actively invited audience participation by asking us to ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ in the right place right from the beginning. Later on when asking an audience member (male) to read the lines of the female lover to her male lover (which is almost Benny Hill territory) who then goes on to utter: ‘it’s like I’m a bad play and everyone’s watching me’ and the writer/actor declaring ‘jinxy jinx…..gee what bad writing’ constantly points at its own self: THE PLAY. These ongoing self-conscious references to the structure of the play makes me label this a ‘selfie generation’ play that then runs the risks of not allowing an audience member to be immersed in the story.
Even though many of the 150 strong audience were laughing at the jokes, Lockwood’s ‘thin breaking down of the fourth wall’ (his own words) are constant, but not that successful. There were too many moments that were played for the laughs rather than building up characters and their interactions with each other. So when it’s a choice between ‘vicious truth and life and lies and darkness’, I’m all for the truth. And I (honestly) love you despite its one interesting idea, did not cut it.
Rating: 3 stars out of 5
Presented by Perth Theatre Trust and Lockwood Productions
Written and Directed by Damon Lockwood
Performed by Damon Lockwood, Talei Howell-Price, George Gayler, Nick Pages-Oliver.
Stage and costumer design by Cherie Hewson
Subiaco Theatre Festival
Subiaco Arts Centre Studio
10-18 June 2016
