Theatre
a bold climate
This year’s Fringe theatre programme is full of productions that explore LOVE in its various uncomfortable forms. Steve Cramer finds passion emanating from some very dark corners.
n our relentless self-isolation. we tread
wearin on through quotidian life in an
atomised world. paying the mortgage. maintaining the car. and buying objects for the house. but why“? Most of us need a subtext that validates all this shallow ducking and diving. but the absence of (iod over the last century or so leaves a void. We till this with love. our only experience of the absolute in a relativistic and contingent world.
In the past. the all—pervasive power of spirituality lay in its capacity to go beyond simple worldly explanation. tapping into the pre-rational to become a purely felt experience. Its great benefit was precisely that it didn‘t require all the science. empiricism and analysis that the ordinary world did. It was beyond language. This is precisely what love does for us. But there are problems. as Jorge Luis Borges once warned us: ‘To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible God.’
But because it‘s a contact with the sublime. beyond language and rational comprehension. we humans aren‘t very good at it. Too tnuch is unstated and unstatable. There are rare cases of malice. but for most of us. the problem is simple emotional incompetence. which comes about because there are no love stories to guide us.
In a culture which might appear to be awash with these. we don‘t actually see people in love in our fiction. drama and filtn. There‘s plenty about the struggle to find love. and no shortage of tragic lost love. but we might well view a story featuring two people in love with the same vague. and arguably jealous. distaste as those couples who grin. giggle and snog away busily opposite us on the train. lnstead love stories fall into the category of love happening after the story is over. like Pip and Estella walking out of the churchyard after 400 pages of struggle in Great [it'pet'trttt’otts. The other kind of love narrative actually doesn‘t happen at all. but is based on 'if only". If only Ali McGraw hadn‘t died in Love Story. if only Romeo and Juliet hadn‘t both died. if only Trevor Howard and (‘elia Johnson hadn‘t been so Britt's/t in Brief [fut-mutter. and so on. Let‘s face it. we're rubbish at love stories.
It's a problem that Dennis Kelly. author of :Vlt’l' I/It' litttl. is well aware of. This piece deals with the strange and twisted emotions of an obsessive (more of which later) hill in the meantime. think of the difficulties this bright young dramatist faced in writing
about love: ‘My original idea was to write a straight love story. bttt we‘re all so cynical. aren’t w e'.’ My next play is called Lore and Money and. well. it's about that. I‘ve managed to give it a happy ending. bttt only by fucking around with time. It starts on a horrible note. but that’s the end of the story in actual timef
And money is one of the problems with love. .lttst as lots of men seek the trophy figure of the plastic suicide blonde to establish their place in the material world. so some women look for a man who's minted enough to surrogate the material for a deeper experience. Neither can find the metaphysical experience of love. This comes not through the strict narrative rules of the stories we tell ourselves. but through something closer to religion. the moment of epiphany. of pre-rational realisation based on a seemingly trivial moment. such as a silly pop song. or even a smell.
Ben Moor knows this well. ‘You think you’re so in control of these old feelings. but you're not at all. It's like smell. you can just smell something. and everything hits you in the memory.‘ he says. This Fringe stalwart is speaking of his new one-man play ('ue/m‘ttttt/t. which uses the metaphor of an ancient species of fish. thought by scientists to be long extinct. which was rediscovered unevolved after thousands of years in the 1930s. ()Id lovers. like the ('oelacanth. lurk in our own psychological depths. to emerge as we walk into a chance encounter in an implausible place.
.\loor gives us the background: ‘He realises he’s been lying to himself when he says that he doesn't need to love her any more. He wants to preserve his anger. He doesn‘t do anything nasty. He doesn‘t stalk her or anything like that. he just wants to keep the resentment. But if you don't move on immediately. if it doesn’t end well. if you're going to burn someone's clothes. then you‘re still left with ashes.’ A salutary lesson. and there's more pithy observation about loy e. loss and competitive tree climbing in this melancholic little comedy.
.'\nd fortner partners are half the problem with line lhe lti\,c' that dare not speak 'it‘s time'. if you will. the one wltcte accidents with alcohol and sex happen long after you‘ve called the official end is a prominent feature of Sam Peter Jackson‘s llt‘ntu' Irrtttt/t‘ons. In it. a nettrotic young British actor goes on to New York to stay (perhaps an ill-judged gesture. this) w llll lns e\ lmy lticntl.
lat kson takes up the story: ‘lt's about letting go. and how when
THE LIST FESTIVAL MAGAZINE 45