REVIEW: Love, Love, Love (Studio Theatre)
Happy new year! With another flip of the calendar here we are in 2024, a leap year with lots to prove. Will our country still be held together by twine and duct tape at the end of it? Will AI take over everyone’s job? Will Florida Ave NE remain a desolate moonscape of potholes by the end of it? So much potential, how exciting!
We’re kicking off 2024’s coverage with Studio Theatre’s latest, Mike Bartlett’s layman trilogy of Baby Boomer fablecraft by the name of Love, Love, Love. Fans of their previous production Fat Ham should be pleased to know that they’re keeping in line with similar themes this season, and though the angles are vastly different, the conversations they create are invaluable.
Story
Kicking off in 1963, we’re introduced to working-class Henry and his slacker Oxforder brother Kenneth, who crashes with him in London. Henry’s free-spirited girlfriend Sandra is coming over for dinner, and upon her arrival Henry is almost immediately cuckolded by the sparks that form between she and Kenneth. The pair bond over their desire for peace, love, and drugs, culminating in a kiss that strikes a rift between the brothers — one that sets the stage for the pair’s future carelessness. Act II (of three, featuring two separate intermissions) then jumps ahead to 1990 where Sandra and Kenneth are now parents, though you wouldn’t know it immediately due to the lack of a single caregiving bone in their body. In this act is where you really get to know these characters and what their values are as grown-ups: Sandra, now an alcoholic, maintains a magnetic sense of self-importance that isolates and traumatizes everyone around her, and Kenneth is a detached busybody with moments of self-awareness that slip by, still untethered to the reality of the conversations or his family. On the eve of their daughter's 16th birthday, both parents nearly miss an important music recital and humiliate her; things get worse at home, where her brother picks on her and her parents show their true, apathetic colors. Instead of a fracturing family dynamic, it never really feels like they were a family at all, ever; just four human pillars talking in a room. In fact, the vibes are pure hell, only growing more rancid until culminating in a violent, disturbing climax. The third act -- arguably its weakest -- serves as an epilogue of sorts. Set in 2009, the children have grown up and the parents have retired. What lessons were being spelled out in the prior acts are sort of dropped, like a ruined surprise party, as the messaging gets very spoon-fed. In a greater sense, the play serves as a skewering of Baby Boomers that's not confident in itself. Growing increasingly intense over its two-and-a-half hour runtime, it throws out very valid and often-said criticisms of the Boomer generation, explains how they got there, and what went wrong, only for it to realize in the third act that these exact people are its audience and it steps back, apologetically. Say it with your whole chest, man! It's one thing for a play to be "bad", but a play that wants to push boundaries and then holds back is arguably worse. There are also missed opportunities within this act, as the brother from Act I one plays a minor role, but could be exaggerated much more as a representative of their abandoning of the working class. By trying not to alienate its audience, it lets the toxicity wrought by its leads off scot-free. Take some risks. Like a lot of parents will tell you, "I'm not mad, I'm disappointed". 5/10
Acting
If the play’s alleged goal is to get you thinking about the way boomers ruined (or “bought”) the world, then its leads sure do good on it. Five actors take the stage over its runtime, (d)evolving into forms of themselves that cling to times past for better or for worse. Liza Bennett’s turn as Sandra is commanding, dominating scenes with both toxin and frivol, yet leaning heavily on the former to prop up the growing status of villainess. Conversely, Max Gordon Moore’s Kenneth does equally deliver toxicity, though with more reservation; it’s apparent at several moments that he seems to come to realizations about his actions but gives into societal expectations. (It’s particularly interesting by the end that upon their reflection, they seem to be at odds that are inverse to their usual behaviors.) Grounding the performances are Madeline Seidman and Max Jackson as the children Rose and Jamie respectively, serving as canvases which are splattered with desolation with each passing minute. These performances are the heart of Act III specifically, as their attempted reckoning of the parents create empathy that augments with each line of apathy from them. 8/10
Tech
What I found to be one of the more compelling storytelling drivers was its subtly engaging set design by Alexander Woodward. Beginning in a cramped pig-sty of a London flat, the decorum is authentically modest, with only a few notable belongings (a record player, a couch, a TV [which, I hate to say, took me out of the action a smidge because it was clearly two decades too new for the setting]). As time passes and their fortunes grow, the set remains a one-room affair from the flat, to a naturalistic, warm suburban homestead, to a soulless, contemporary cavern. The elements both compliment and contrast in wonderful ways, both setting the stage with details and evoking feelings of abandonment, distance, facetiousness, and asking what "love" is. In many ways, it's more effective than the script itself. 8/10
VisDev
Pre-show staging is an uncomfortably close-up curtained proscenium in which front row is directly against the stage, itself being framed on all sides by a golden trim. The only thematic information given is the music, which changes for each act to set the timeline (except for the third act, which for some reason was preluded by 80s music and /then/ Akon). It's low-key giving “Chicago”? But it doesn't say much, nor does the program art, featuring just the title in a pop-art aesthetic over a posterized record player. It does minorly imply a vintage personality, but nothing beyond it. 4/10
Verdict:
Love, Love, Love attempts to create an incisive narrative surrounding the most controversial generation, but deflates before it leaves any marks. Still, engaging performances and clever design keep it afloat longer than expected.
25/40
