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Made From Love

Camden People’s Theatre

Reviewed – 30th January 2020

★★★½

“brave, and at times heartbreakingly raw”

Made From Love’s portrayal of the almost madness that a couple go through when they find themselves in a position of unplanned pregnancy is, at times, raw and honest. Matthew Coulton and Linn Johansson’s devised piece explores their journey in a shared stream of consciousness; they allow the audience in on their panic and although this sometimes came across as a little disjointed, there were flashes of true humanity which were awe-inspiring. With moments of physical theatre scattered between rap, voiceovers, ventriloquism and genuine moments of profound stillness and honesty, the play carries the audience through the couple’s whole process as they work their way through the decision of whether they should keep their baby or to have an abortion.

Coulton and Johansson shone in moments where they broke away from the hectic atmosphere that the play inherited. It was the times that they they stood still and spoke freely to one another that captured the true meaning of the piece, and this was done brilliantly. There was a real vulnerability in this stillness which was heart-breaking and showed a great deal of skill and commitment from the actors. This was mirrored in them remaining bare foot throughout the performance, suggesting further their vulnerability and connection to the earth and each other. Unfortunately, these moments were too few and far between and the contrast between these moments and the rest of the play was vast.

The pair try to do too much at once, without allowing the play to explore any angle that it tried to go down. Perhaps this was their intention; to show the nonsensical nature of thought when it comes to such an important decision, but this wasn’t made clear enough to be effective. The moments portraying madness were short and loud, including a shrieking wig in a Jerry Springer interpretation and an Artuadian-esque breaking of a biscuit into a microphone, acting as a potential metaphor for a miscarriage. These moments were, it seemed, intentionally harrowing and confusing, but with each moment of ‘madness’ Coulton and Johansson adopted a new technique, leaving the show feeling uneven and unfinished.

The set was minimalistic, with a doll’s house placed in the centre of the stage and two microphones. The doll’s house was used as a seat, a prop store and also, perhaps, a representation of how small and meaningless the material world is when you are faced with the creation of another life. If the latter was the intention, they did not allow this to develop or use the prop to its full potential, again, leaving the play feeling unfinished. There is a quite beautiful moment where the actors brought white balloons with a small light into them onto the stage. It was clear that there was thought behind this moment, but it was explained in a heavy metaphor that provoked intrigue, but didn’t make enough sense, or seem relevant to the show.

Made From Love is brave, and at times heartbreakingly raw, but it feels as if it has been put together without any clear narrative arc which left it feeling manic and unfinished.

Reviewed by Mimi Monteith

Made From Love

Camden People’s Theatre until 1st February

Previously reviewed at this venue:

Hot Flushes – The Musical | ★★★ | June 2019

Ophelia Rewound | ★★★★ | August 2019

The Indecent Musings Of Miss Doncaster 2007 | ★★★½ | August 2019

A Haunted Existence | ★★★★ | October 2019

Trigger Warning | ★★★ | October 2019

I, Incel | ★★★ | November 2019

Sh!t Actually | ★★★★ | December 2019

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★★★★★

“Technically slick, the lighting, sound, music and movement coalesce to create a West End experience in miniature”

When Ishmael arrives at ‘The Spouter’ run by Peter Coffin, it’s clear Moby Dick’s author, Herman Melville, loves an ominous portent, so he would have loved the fact that the opening week of Douglas Baker’s stage adaptation started with a dead humpback in the Thames. However, with humanity’s disregard for nature a central theme of both the book and this radical new envisioning, Melville would have seen the current climate change protests as just as relevant and a dark testament to his prophetic work.

Rather like Theatre Workshop’s ‘Oh! What a Lovely War’, the full throttle irreverence in the treatment of a deadly serious subject is a powerfully winning formula for this ‘So it Goes Theatre’ production. Accentuating the homoerotic undercurrents and humour of the original while modernising its scope to encompass the problems of junk food, plastic waste and reckless corporate behaviour, the show miraculously manages not only to remain faithful to the essence of this literary leviathan, but to make it fresh and accessible though the inventive use of projections, Baker’s own video design and some corking sea shanties (Alex Chard).

It’s not immediately clear that the approach will hold water. The opening sketch leading to the book’s iconic first line ‘Call me Ishmael’, is inspired, but seems to be based on the trivial fact that Starbucks derived its name (fairly randomly) from the Pequod’s first mate. However, the storyline cleverly pivots into Ishmael’s meditation that whenever life becomes formless and incomprehensible on land he hankers for the sea, where a sense of comradeship, structure and purpose creates, paradoxically, more certainty. Which is all fine until Captain Ahab’s obsession with the great white whale increasingly becomes a madness that embraces murder and waste without conscience.

Charlie Tantam conveys Ahab’s destructive will with increasing force, assisted by a terrifyingly exaggerated limp. Equally accomplished are Rob Peacock as Old Ishmael and Ben Howarth as Young Ishmael; collectively they comprise an ingenious narrative tool allowing the book’s narrator voice to survive alongside the thrill of the protagonist’s journey. Stephen Erhirhi is a distant and disengaged Queequeg at first, though his detachment takes on heavy significance later as he accepts the fate that the humanity of which he is a part has in store. Lucianne Regan plays Starbuck fairly straight too, but as an ensemble they are well balanced and create the movement of the ship in a storm and the hunting scenes with great skill. Technically slick, the lighting (Toby Smith), sound (Calum Perrin), music (Richard Kerry) and movement (Matthew Coulton) coalesce to create a West End experience in miniature, overseen by Douglas Baker’s direction. This format for Moby Dick neutralises the dense 19th Century prose without losing some of its finer passages, whilst delivering quite the topical punch.

Reviewed by Dominic Gettins

Photography by Carl Fletcher