Unheard Theatre, a newly formed Manchester company of young creatives wanting to bring to life stories yet untold and unheard. In their first production, How You Love Me, they perform a three-hander based on the true love story of lesbians in the repressed, male-dominated society of 1960's England.
Written by Chloe McLaughlin, the narrative suffers somewhat from the very disjointed 'television soap' style of writing. We were continually ping-ponging from A to B and back again with alarming speed. A rather alarming trend in new theatrical writing sadly is that it is taking the TV path and viewpoint that no-one is capable of watching anything in the same setting for more than 2 minutes. Moreover the very first thing to happen on stage gives away far too much of the plot, and consequently spoils the anticipation and build of the following exposition.
However, once you get over this writing style, the play is actually quite powerful. Given the youthfulness and therefore obvious lack of experience these three performers have, their acting ability and the truthfulness they gave to their roles was extremely real and natural.
It is the mid-sixties, and of course women's emancipation was still a thing of the future and the misogynistic male dominated marriages, home life, and more or less everything. A woman's place was in the home to look after her husband and make sure he was kept well fed and content. A man's job was to go out to work to provide for his family. It was all very simplistic and 'neat'. And so when, seven years ago, Marie (Josie Connor) is forced into wedlock at 18 due to her pregnancy, and her husband-to-be Ernie (Daniel Allen) does the decent thing, they live a life of 'married bliss' until Marie starts to ask for a little more freedom to do things she wants to do. She misses work, she misses leaving the house, and finally her husband relents and allows her to go to a keep-fit class. It is there that she meets the instructress of the class, the chocolate eclaire-eating hard-core lesbian Liz (Sam Murphy), and her love and her life change forever.
The play does suffer a little from being somewhat drawn out and lengthy. I also thought that the play ended twice before it actually did, but the final ending actually was a lovely idea fast-forwarding to 2005. Olivia Neilsen's directing concentrates more on character and character development than finding solutions for very awkward entrances, exits and overlong scene changes, but the work she did paid dividends, as the characters were real, believable, and excellently drawn. Connor, Allen and Murphy made an excellent threesome and the standing ovation at the end was indeed deserved.
A story of forbidden lesbian love told with sincerity. An impressive debut!
Reviewer - Matthew Dougall
on - 19/9/18
No comments:
Post a Comment