Love and Other Promises
Kathy McGarry and Emma Dargan-Reid in Love and Other Promises. Image by Al Craig.
****
Already, up-and-coming playwright Colette Cullen appears to be building a brand. Bewley’s Café Theatre’s revival of Love and Other Promises, a sequel to the utterly charming When Rachel Met Fiona, looking like the next episode in an aspiring movie franchise. Or Netflix series. Cullen’s New York frame of mind, jazz-piano follow-up sees the troubled couple end their marriage, navigate a new shared-parenting normal and learn how to move on together yet apart. Cullen’s snappy, cinematic script less a story so much as a chronology of loosely sketched arguments laced with charm. Skating the surface rather than plumbing the depths, Cullen’s talk-it-all-better, lightweight dialogue again taking the driving seat. Beautifully steered by director Iseult Golden, who reunites with set designer Lisa Krugel and the excellent Emma Dargan-Reid as Rachel from the 2023 production of When Rachel Met Fiona, alongside an impressive Kathy McGarry as Fiona.
Emma Dargan-Reid and Kathy McGarry in Love and Other Promises. Image by Al Craig.
Clearly, Cullen’s writing has sharpened since the girls first met. Love and Other Promises diving straight in without an ounce of flab, trusting the audience don’t need spoon-feeding. What initially appear to be two snappy monologues foreshadowing a couples-counselling session. The break-up immediate; the action quickly avalanches. Yet if there’s no flab, there’s also very little meat. Love and Other Promises a solid skeleton on which scraps of muscle are hinted at rather than seen. Theatrical limitations straightjacketing Cullen’s thinly disguised screenplay. One which heavily references offstage characters, locations and incidents. Like the significant Helen, one of several jarring gear changes that could have been smoother. Forays into breast cancer and poor mental health feeling tokenistic or troubling. The “smarten yourself up” scene, as Rachel confesses to poor mental health, feels contrived rather than convincing. Like a tree sagging under the weight of unseen fruit, there’s a wealth of richness ready to drop. But with one eye on the visual and aural language of the screen, you often sense more than see it onstage.
Kathy McGarry and Emma Dargan-Reid in Love and Other Promises. Image by Al Craig
What you do see is a chemically charged couple you desperately care for. Golden’s direction guiding you along with a caressing rhythm, ensuring you sympathetically connect. Not always an easy task. McGarry drawing the shorter performative straw. Two minutes in Fiona’s company and you too would want a divorce. A paragon of self-righteous vilification, like a secular Mother Superior, Fiona’s uptight maturity can feel like living with a prison officer. Yet Cullen’s charmless Fiona is made sensitively engaging by McGarry. Dargan-Reid’s Rachel, wearing her heart and mind on her sleeve, makes the easier job of the requisite villain look effortless. Gesture, tone and expression, all richly nuanced and detailed, suggesting Dargan-Reid should never play poker. Body and face a beautiful conversation in subtext. Slipping free of the gendered tones that Toni Bailey’s trousers-and-tie costume bind her in. The masculine frame diluting the power of a woman's struggle. Rachel more a little boy lost, needing their mammy: the one who abandons their children and home, has an affair, and essentially conforms to the stereotypical male playbook. Suggesting there’s nothing new to see here. But there was. And Dargan-Reid makes us see quite a lot of it.
If there’s still a little work to be done before landing that franchise deal, Cullen, like her characters, has progressed in leaps and bounds. Love and Other Promises possessing that which learned technical ability cannot teach: heart, soul, charm and effortless delight. Seducing like a guilty pleasure, Love and Other Promises is the perfect lunchtime treat. Catch some rising stars before they go big time.
Love and Other Promises by Colette Cullen, presented by Bewley’s Café Theatre with Home You Go Productions, runs at Bewley’s Café Theatre until November 28, 2026.
For more information, visit Bewley’s Café Theatre.
