'Till Love Us Do Part' is a two-hander written, produced and directed by Kirsty Halliday, and presented digitally as part of this year's Edinburgh Fringe Online Festival. The production was filmed in the writer's home country of The Cayman Islands in front of a live audience, and so the viewer was able to gauge audience reactions much more accurately than had it been filmed as an online play.
Lasting just 60 minutes the play takes us through the first few years of a middle-aged couple's realtionship, from first tentative date to several years into their marriage and all the baggage that comes with it. I would not be giving too much away to say that the plot primarily deals with a miscarriage and how the two of them cope with this. There are other minor sub-plots too; and in the course of this hour, there are (I didn't count but am sure I am in the ballpark) 16 small scenes (vignettes), which must only last 3 or 4 minutes each, and are connected by semi-blackout and music whilst the performers move props and change clothes as necessary.
It is these scene-changing interludes which makes the play feel much longer than it really is. The directing and performing offers very little in the way of dynamics, and the two cast members keep the same pace all the way through hardly ever changing their vocal intonations, and never changing their speed, and so to have these musical interruptions too, some of which lasted longer than the actual scene, was rather annoying.
Lorna Fitzgerald plays Jennifer (Jen to her friends), an Englsih estate agent who falls madly in love with a Canadian lawyer, Simon (Si), played by Liam Oko. I think there was much more humour to be gained from the language differences, but what we were given was a gentle RomCom which half-way through, turned into a melodrama. If the whole had been upped a couple of gears or so, and the characters more focused, it would have delivered a punch. As it was, it just ambled on with a very predictable ending.
The play provided an hour's diversion from the usual quotidien routine, and was pleasant enough to watch; and unlike many Fringe theatre productions which have a 'message' or an 'issue' they wish to make people more aware of (in this case miscarriage), it was done in a totally "innocent" and natural way, without any tub-thumping. Bravo!
Reviewer - Chris Benchley
on - 31.8.21
The play provided an hour's diversion from the usual quotidien routine, and was pleasant enough to watch; and unlike many Fringe theatre productions which have a 'message' or an 'issue' they wish to make people more aware of (in this case miscarriage), it was done in a totally "innocent" and natural way, without any tub-thumping. Bravo!
Reviewer - Chris Benchley
on - 31.8.21
No comments:
Post a Comment