REVIEW: Final performance of 'Magnificant 'Lovesong' takes place tonight in Waterford
'Lovesong' is a powerful play.
Migrating starlings wheel and reel across the rear screen projection, yellow and brown and hectic-red autumnal leaves tower over the stage and lie strewn, along with peach tree droppings, across the garden space of the multi-functional setting for Red n’ Blue’s ‘Lovesong’.
It’s a time for reflection.
Pensioner dentist Billy (Seán Ahearne) soliloquizes about the durability of teeth to survive decomposing corpses and when his wife Maggie (Mary-Flavin Colbert) muses about how her meds keep her awake until five in the morning, we all know that mortality is an issue.
The shadow of the inflexible doorman hangs over this story like a virus that just won’t go away.
Billy and Maggie are old now. The old who are really old. The hyphenated old: the old-and-ailing, the old-and-lonely, the old-and-grieving, the old-and-afraid, the old-and-alone.
They have issues to discuss: Disposal of assets, inheritance. And just what do you do when there’s no one left to leave the house with 28 windows to? And Ginger the cat, who no longer comes home to Maggie at night. Who’s going to mind Ginger? Their silences speak to our souls.
Unspoken memories are revealed through the drama of their younger selves as William (Dylan Kennedy) and Margaret (Jenny Fennessy) re-enact crucial episodes in their relationship. Young, educated, carefree lovers who plan a world together of travel and friends and neighbours, and a home of their own with children and grandchildren.
Nobody creates myths about our own existence like we do ourselves.
We dream ourselves an existence every day with our own selves cast as the heroes of our own mythologies.
We showreel it on an endless loop in the theatre of our minds; and because it feels so incredibly real, we blind ourselves to the reality that it might never happen.
Life, alas, that great disrupter of plans, drops its anchor. Months pass by with no sign of a child. Suddenly it’s three years. Young Maggie cries out in desperation, ‘Amy doesn’t want children! But I do. I want a baby!’ Hearts melted, hankies snaffled and quiet sobs were heard in the theatre at the despair of a young man and woman who want to leave something behind. A legacy.
In a drama of charged emotion where the unsaid is more powerful than the spoken, the young couple’s desperation grips its audience.
The movement between the old and young couple is seamless. The older couple’s memories remain as lived experiences and their loving interchanges remind us of the memories of youth and love that never leaves any marriage.
Entering from everywhere, their courtship is a pas-de-deux of romantic movement that is warm and moving. Their initial scenes of youthful hope and naïve expectation are watched with the detachment of past happenings by the older couple.
Regret fills the air when flirtation and mild betrayal surfaces as the empty years of childlessness envelops them and bitter words are exchanged. Sometimes, having each other isn’t just enough despite Maggie’s sincere cry of ‘wanting to grow old with my husband’.
Past and present combine in a tale where time is no longer a linear narrative but a time-bending curve with tangents that somehow bookends our lives.
Life changes us. Heraclitus, way back in 500BC, warned us that we never step into the same river twice because the river changes and also changes us.
The couple have questions, now. And no definitive answers. Are they the same Billy and Maggie that once had all those dreams? What happiness does prosperity bring? What happens when Maggie’s meds no longer works and Billy is on his own? Things go wrong in often quite simple ways. Life intervenes.
'Lovesong' never stands still for a second. It’s a key part of its strength. Something is always happening as the narrative sweeps along. Silences play as great a part as the unspoken in creating the charged emotion of this compelling drama.
Director Dylan Kennedy gives a masterclass in production values.
Pace, characterisation, drama, seamless interchange between laughter and tears, silence and spoken and the omnipresence of past and present characters make 'Lovesong' a compelling story.
The ensemble acting of the quartet of Seán Ahearne (Billy), Mary Flavin-Colbert (Maggie), Jenny Fennessy (Margaret) and Dylan Kennedy (William) is a joy.
There’s a geography and a space to the performances that brings you to unexpected places. Each performance is, in its own unique way, compelling. A close friend confided, ‘I could identify with everything…I felt as if I was onstage, myself’.
'Lovesong' is a brutally honest, deeply moving and wonderfully scripted drama that is compelling from curtain to curtain. Brilliant.
