Lovesong (Oberon Modern Plays)

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The story, which explores the endurance of relationships and decaying of the human body is brought to life, focuses on the entwining lives of William and Margaret (later becoming Bill and Maggie) as they progress through time together, and the audience witness their past and present selves collide in memories. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. uk to discuss your individual requirements, and you'll hopefully see our new site and products soon! The sadness of mortality, the sense of loss, is balanced by the delightful quirkiness of Morgan's text, which is by turns playful and illuminating. Rather than just getting the bill and admitting we were on different pages we chatted about the similarities!

Fugee (National Theatre), 27 (National Theatre of Scotland), Love Song (Frantic Assembly) and The Mistress Contract (Royal Court Theatre). Her plays include Skinned, Sleeping Around, Splendour (Paines Plough); Tiny Dynamite (Traverse); Tender (Hampstead Theatre);. This subtle factor bared significance, as it showed Maggie’s hearing deteriorating as she became older. The performance was conducted in the visceral, physical theatre style which Frantic Assembly is so well accredited for.

Often when both couples appeared in the same scene together, the young couple were lit in a soft, warm coloured lighting whilst the old couple were often left in darkness. This evoked sympathy from the audience for Maggie, as the shoes were representative of her youth; being unable to walk in them seemed like being unable to relive her youth despite her best efforts and clear sense of nostalgia. is a question we all ask ourselves as we grow older, and while this show may be shamelessly emotionally manipulative with its musical underscoring and videos of rising flocks of starlings, the manipulation of time that is most heart-stoppingly effective.

An example of this was how as a younger couple, they seemed to discuss everything; children, jobs, ambitions, friends, however as they grew older the silences between conversations seemed to become longer, and conversational topics seemed to run dry. Whilst these furnishings were used beautifully for seamless entrances and exits of the actors (such as when Maggie walks into the wardrobe, and the younger Margaret steps out) the rest of the spacious stage was left empty; allowing room for scenes of elaborate physical theatre. Lovesong’ worked as a Dali timepiece but made one ache for a recent past when such lovely works of art could be enjoyed in real time. Both men wore brown button down shirts, whilst in one of the scenes Maggie is seen wearing a scarf of the same blue colour as the dress Margaret was wearing in the previous scene.She also gives a beautifully understated performance as the old lady wracked by physical pain and dark memory. The production stayed with me for a long time after I had seen it, as for me it illustrated the fragility of life and relationships, and the naturalistic, raw emotional response to separation through death. Abi Morgan’s love story time-warps us through the 40 years’ marriage of Maggie (Siân Phillips) and Billy (Sam Cox). This use of soft lighting and gentle music, which accompanied the couple’s conversation about death, made the audience feel remorseful and naturally captured the universal fear of ageing. A specific scene which was empowered by music was the scene where Maggie finds her old high heel shoes in the wardrobe.

Her The Night is Darkest Before the Dawn was written and performed as part of The Great Game: Afghanistan cycle of plays which recently toured to the Pentagon. That powerful image of time as a viscous fluid, disappearing before our eyes, gradually leaking into oblivion, came to mind while watching ‘Lovesong’ on Digital Theatre. I think the reason it was so particularly hard-hitting was that even though physical theatre elements and explorative strategies created a non-naturalistic effect, the original plot beneath it is an entirely realistic depiction of a couple’s lives together and shows how being so in love and having each other as a constant shields them from recognising how quickly the things around them change until they’re near the end of their lives.There is something a trifle over-elegiac about the evening, and the script is frustratingly hazy on detail. This image linked to the earlier conversation between Maggie and Bill, when she told him that she would want him to relive memories and revisit places they’d been together when she was gone. That sometimes bumpy relationship is drawing to a close as Maggie’s increasing and terminal frailty forces the couple into making some drastic preparations. A crescendo of classical music faded into the scene as she tried to walk in her old shoes with difficulty. The use of levels in this scene aided the visual impact; as their future selves were sat directly behind them.