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Theatre listings >
Love and Marriage
- Tour.
Playwright - Donald Churchill. died 1991.
Director - Mark Clements.
Designer - Philip Witcomb.
Lighting Designer - Chris Ellis.
Producers - Theatre Royal Bath Productions.
Cast - here.
Venue - King's Theatre Edinburgh.
Dates - 18 - 22 Feb at 7:30pm Wed and Sat Matinees at 2:30pm.
Run Time - 2 hours 20 mins including 15 mins interval.
Reviewer - Thelma Good.
Better to stay in bed.
Bill, Adam Faith, offers the advice in Love and Marriage
to use, "a good old fashioned Anglo Saxon lie", but I'm a Scottish
reviewer, so I won't.
When the play starts there's a guy bent over a guitar picking out that
Beatles tune, Blackbird. It's not Adam and flying away might be a good
idea. Only Stephen Boxer engages as the strumming overdafted businessman
Tony while you wait for for the play to take off. It never does.
Tony and his wife Ruth have a marriage based on honesty, so they say to
each other, to everyone. Friend Bill, a cockney Dentist is into, as well
as those lies, what he calls ...crumpet. He's a bit of a **cker.
Bill calls in to find his friend's double booked himself. Old chums Anne
and very successful Jeremy are coming for dinner. As the blurb often says,
complications ensue when Anne, abandoned by husband Jeremy at Tony and
Ruth's house, reaches for her sleeping pills.
Yep the plot is contrived to get the story to develop. It's also populated
with several characters, Jeremy and Bill's wife Mandy, who we never see.
And bringing an actor on only as a comatose body is a dramatic mistake
Donald Churchill makes with Anne the abandoned wife, she never speaks.
Unevenly written, some lines and scenes die. They are overloaded with
clichés or unnecessary information Churchill felt he had to give
us. Bill and Ruth, Liz Izen, get the worst of them, Tony's quite
well written.
The themes, open relationship versus dishonest ones, how to keep a relationship
alive are potentially dramatic but this 80s drama looks very dated post
AIDS, post the last twenty years. If the playwright was working out his
marriage theories on the boards, he'd have been better to stay in bed,
and the play to be forgot.
On the first night in Edinburgh stage drinks and scenery caused problems
for Faith. To his credit he ad-libbed and recovered well from them.
His considerable charm means his plans to record once again and do a concert
tour should take off far better than this touring production of Love and
Marriage.
© Thelma Good 18 February 2003. - Published on EdinburghGuide.com
Cast:
Tony - Stephen Boxer, Ruth - Liz Izen, Bill - Adam Faith
and Anne - Lynn Robertson Hay.
Tour details
Tour continues.
24 Feb - 1 Mar at Stratford Royal Shakespeare Theatre 01789 296655.
3 - 8 March at 8pm Mats Wed & Sat at 2:30pm at Stoke-on-Trent Regent
Theatre 01782 213800.
10 - 15 March at 7:45 Mats Thur & Sat at 2:30pm Brighton Theatre Royal
01273 764431.
17 - 22 March at Guilford Yvonne Arnaud Theatre 01483 440000.
24 - 29 March at Darlington Civic Theatre 01325 486555.
31 March - 5 April at 8pm Mats Wed & Sat at 2:30pm Eastbourne Devonshire
Park Theatre 01323 412000.
Holiday Week.
15 - 19 April at 8pm Mats Wed & Sat at 2:30pm Malvern Festival Theatre
01684 893300 .
22 - 26 April at 7:30pm Mats Wed & Sat at 2:30pm Poole Lighthouse
Theatre 01202 685222 .
Tour Ends.
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