“Ambiguous and challenging, “Lovefool” has its imperfections. But Winters is mesmerising in a performance that is faultless.”
Towards the end of “Lovefool”, Grace – played by the intensely charismatic Kristin Winters – hovers at the edge of the auditorium and directs a few merciless questions at the audience. Without giving away the exact nature of them, it becomes clear from the reactions that the realities of depression, abuse, suicide, anxiety, fear or self-loathing are a hair’s breadth away from each and every one of us. They walk among us. And in just under an hour, Winters leads us right into the throng, on a journey that takes many wrong turnings. It sounds dismal, yet the vicarious sense of healing derived from Grace’s self-examination is exhilarating. And often funny.
Grace is looking for love. But what is love? It’s a question echoed in a thousand pop songs, none of which help Grace at all. She dances to the rhythms but can’t bear the lyrics. She sees her shrink, goes to confession, and devours dating apps and red wine in equal abundance. She thinks she finds love in an Icelandic singer but, when the alcoholic haze disperses, he’s just another figurative fist to endure. Written and directed by Gintare Parulyte, this one-woman show is initially charged with humour, even if a little dark. It might not be telling us anything particularly new but there is a freshness to the expressions and a sharpness to the language that strengthens the text. There is a Larkinesque quality as she talks of the “broken families we run away from and then create”.
The authenticity of the performance is tinged with strokes of satire. A dig at a sexist director pinpoints the gender inequality in the industry, while David Gaspar’s video projections parody the sex education programmes we all remember. While Winters successfully interacts with these, her imaginary characters and with the audience, the overall staging is haphazard and disjointed. Perhaps this is intentionally disconcerting. Anyone who has spent time with someone with OCD will be on familiar ground. Winters convincingly portrays a damaged soul, with a dark humour that slowly gives way to mere darkness, as memories of past traumatic abuse are uncovered; shockingly triggered by a song she used to hear.
There is occasionally a platitudinal air to the messages that Parulyte wants to convey. In less able hands the piece could come across as a rather morbid affair. But Kristin Winters commands the space with her finely honed stagecraft. She knows when to dress the wounds in light entertainment and can perfectly balance the bawdy with the tragedy. Dispensing with the bulk of the auditorium, the audience are seated in an arc around the playing space. We are therapist, witness, confidant and eavesdropper – the intimacy sometimes blurring the line between Winter and the character she represents.
Come curtain call, Winters fights back the tears. Tears that glisten with notes of optimism. “We are all wounded children of wounded children”. Perhaps the cycle has been broken for Grace, and she can dance to a different tune. Ambiguous and challenging, “Lovefool” has its imperfections. But Winters is mesmerising in a performance that is faultless.
“Dan Gillespie Sells’ minimalist score is the pulse of the piece. The songs are an essential narrative. A mood board and a close-up lens.”
Let us begin with what “Brokeback Mountain” is not. It is not a musical, most certainly not a queer musical. Nor is it a flag bearer for the LGBTQ community. Ashley Robinson’s ninety-minute play with music, based on Annie Proulx’s deeply moving novella, defies categorisation. It simply rests on its own uniqueness, to be gently devoured by the watcher. Comparisons to Ang Lee’s 2005 feature film should be avoided. Jonathan Butterell’s production has a voice of its own, sometimes barely more than a whisper, but one whose effects will rise above a lot of the clamour in the West End.
The story is one of forbidden love, framed within the memory of an ageing Ennis Del Mar (Paul Hickey). We are invited to remember a time and a place where being gay could very well be fatal. We are in a scrubland of back-country homophobia that shapes the destinies of two home-grown country kids; ill-informed and confused but wading, ultimately drowning, in bittersweet longing. Oscar nominee Lucas Hedges plays Ennis Del Mar, fearful and quiet, and ‘not much of a talker’, as pointed out by Mike Faist’s brisk and breezy Jack Twist.
They meet in 1963, both hired hands on Joe Aguirre’s (the charismatic Martin Marquez) sheep ranch. Sharing roll-ups and campfire banter, their laddish camaraderie evolves into a drunken fumbling which, after insisting is a one-time affair, becomes a lifelong passion – detached from, yet destroying their respective marriages, families and their own sense of themselves. Their presence is quite magnetic, but the onstage chemistry is not always strong enough to express the deep sense of longing.
The full force of the emotional landscape is brought to us through the music. Dan Gillespie Sells’ minimalist score is the pulse of the piece. The songs are an essential narrative. A mood board and a close-up lens. Greg Miller’s yearning harmonica with BJ Cole’s pedal steel guitar fill the silences with an emotional depth the dialogue can only dream of. Sean Green’s restrained leitmotifs on the piano perfectly underpin the plaintive vocals. Eddi Reader’s voice has a gorgeous purity, scratched by a smoky rawness that echoes the spirit of the protagonists and guides us to their hearts.
The intimacy of the play is captured, too, in Tom Pye’s thoughtful design, drifting from canvas and campfires to the chipped furnishings of Ennis’ home. There the story reaches beyond the central couple shining a light on the sad neglect of Ennis’ wife, Alma. In a stunning stage debut, Emily Fairn subtly exposes the danger that her husband has put himself in. And consequently, the danger for herself too. At its core, “Brokeback Mountain” is a tragedy of two people having to keep their love hidden from the world. But the repercussions go further, touching each and all, which Fairn brilliantly emphasises. Similarly, backing singer Sophie Reid, in a heart-wrenching cameo as Jack Twist’s wife, Lureen, brings home the aching tragedy.
“If you can’t fix it, you gotta stand it” intones Jack Twist, more than once. Fortunately, since the time this is set in, society has ceased to stand it and started to try fixing it. Unfortunately, however, the play’s desolate ending is not something that is confined to history. “Brokeback Mountain” is an important piece of theatre. Compelling and tender. Powerful but fragile. Gentle yet hard-hitting. And quite unmissable.
