SIX ACTS OF LOVE. To 11 October.

Glasgow.

SIX ACTS OF LOVE
by Ioanna Anderson.

Tron Theatre To 11 October 2008.
Tue-Sat 7.30pm.
Runs 2hr 20min One interval.

TICKETS: 0141 552 4267.
www.tron.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 1 October.

Six Acts with five lovely performances and acute direction.
In a memorable moment of Bryony Lavery’s A Wedding Story, premiered at Birmingham Rep eight years ago, a woman doctor in her late fifties (played by Kika Markham) is asked by a younger family member to describe Alzheimer’s Disease. Mid-description she stops and simply says, “I’ve got it, haven’t I?”

There’s nothing quite so devastating about seventy-something Dorothy’s progressive degeneration of memory in Ioanna Anderson’s new play, though the moment when she calls repeatedly in alarm for “Fergus” without recognising her long-time companion standing by her carries the emotional weight theatre provides when seemingly simple dialogue or action encapsulates painful human experience.

Yet Dorothy’s not really central to this family play that’s not quite about a family. Actor Fergus is apparently gay, but has a steadfast relationship with Dorothy, while her daughter Katherine (chronologically in her advanced fifties, though never in Barbara Wilshere’s performance) sees her husband Tom prepare to desert her. At the end, Katherine seems set for happiness with her mother’s carer Delilah, who seems equally happy, despite describing Katherine as too heterosexual: an ending either glib or tentative, depending on what might happen next.

Strongly-played in Andy Arnold’s Tron premiere, Anderson’s drama moves freely forward as relationships develop. The women are its core, only Delilah seeming slightly tacked-on to be available when ready. The men are not ciphers, but Fergus is created more through his spoken memories than in interaction with the others and Tom’s there largely to be a self-justifying swine. Except in the financial sense, as he goes out of his way to repair a faultline in his relationship with Katherine that recalls Priestley’s When We Are Married.

Still, if an overview suggests over-neatness in the patterning of relationships, the beautifully-played sections often have their own warmth and involvement. On a raised stage giving prominence to the characters, surrounded by part-built walls suggestive of incomplete domesticity in Francis Gallop’s design, the opening moment of apparent domestic content, with McLeans’s Dorothy talking merrily, attended by Barbara and Delilah, soon splits to show both the crevices in these lives and the attempts at love the title describes.

Katherine: Barbara Wilshere.
Dorothy: Una McLean.
Delilah: Clara Onyemere.
Fergus: Des Braiden.
Tom: Benny Young.

Director: Andy Arnold.
Designer: Francis Gallop.
Lighting: Mark Hughes.
Sound: Steve Bain.
Associate dramaturg: Pamela McQueen.
Audio-visual designer: Jennifer O’Hara.

2008-10-06 00:48:25