LOVE SONG. To 17 February.

London

LOVE SONG
by John Kolvenbach

New Ambassadors Theatre
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat Thu & Sat 3pm
Runs 1hr 35min No interval

TICKETS: 0870 534 4444
www.ticketmaster.co.uk (£2.50 transaction charge on ‘phone/online bookings)
Review: Timothy Ramsden 3 January

Life, like playwrights, can play funny tricks.
This play draws on 2 devices from dramatic stock. The invention of an invisible friend (used twice by Ayckbourn, once by Mary Chase – in Harvey - and probably many more times too), and the arrival of somebody who, intentionally or otherwise, makes people’s lives happier.

John Kolvenbach’s play contrasts American brother and sister Beane and Joan; designer Scott Pask contrasts their lives likewise with his set, as the perfectly rational room and furnishings of Joan and husband Harry’s life slide around the Spartan setting of Beane’s apartment, with its (unseen) windowless bathroom and sculptured roof with an Edgar Allan Poe-like tendency to drop in on its inhabitant.

As if in response to the pressure and depression of Beane’s life, the intense and energetic Molly arrives as a burglar. Which is Beane’s useful rationalisation of her sudden presence and, considering how little he has to be burgled, is an occupation leaving her plenty of time to talk.

That’s something he starts doing too, when visiting the family. At first he'd hilariously demolished Harry’s attempt to try him out with a questionnaire, in semi-communicative responses. But when Beane’s met Molly he effuses to the point of garrulity. And shows a new realism in being the first to voice that she does not belong in the same world as Harry and Joan.

Cillian Murphy is variously, sometimes simultaneously, funny and moving as Beane, while Michael McKean and Kristen Johnston have a finely-detailed relationship as the family’s inhabitants in normality. The indirect shift towards greater happiness in their lives through Molly’s impact on Beane is the subtlest point in the play.

Compared with these active, developing characters, Molly is somewhat withdrawn, something evident in Neve Campbell’s frequent stillness and in her restricted vocal palette. But it makes her less forceful than the play really needs, though John Crowley provides a neat moment of stage-trickery with a wine-bottle to give her world an extra impetus. Ultimately, though, the unreal character, so beloved recently in Hollywood, doesn’t have the definition or force to energise the outcomes back on Planet Reality.

Beane: Cillian Murphy
Joan: Kristen Johnston
Harry: Michael McKean
Molly: Neve Campbell
Waiter James Scales
Waitress: Romy Tennant

Director: John Crowley
Designer: Scott Pask
Lighting: Howard Harrison
Sound: Paul Arditti
Costume: Jack Galloway
Associate design: Al Turner

2007-01-15 01:50:15