Lovesong

Chris O'Rourke
5 hours ago
3 min read

****

They sure don’t make them like they used to. Songs, movies, chocolate eclairs. And, of course, love stories. In which a handsome, respectable boy falls for a wholesome, virginal girl next door. They kiss, marry, then settle down to a raise a brood of happily ever afters. The staple narrative of Hollywood’s escapist rom coms, especially during its Golden Era. Perhaps that’s why Abi Morgan grounds her poignant Lovesong in 60’s America. Where married, immigrant couple, Maggie and William, paragons of middle class respectability, aspire to a life more Norman Rockwell than Richard Yates. Living a Doris Day, Rock Hudson movie, minus the songs, that slathers on the schmaltz. Were that all Morgan had to offer you could easily dismiss Lovesong and leave it there. Yet beyond its obvious, dated kitsch there’s a heart beating wild and passionate. Transforming two lives less than ordinary into a universal experience of love and loss, youth and aging, living and dying, with the telling far tastier than the tale.

Ingrid Craigie, Zara Devlin, Naoise Dunbar, Nick Dunning in Lovesong by Abi Morgan. Image, Pato Cassinoni

If form is content and content form, Lovesong begs to differ. Its content revolving around retired dentist William and retired librarian Maggie as they remember dullish slices of married life whilst facing into Maggie’s encroaching, and vastly more interesting death. A life of passionate, troubled devotion peppered with fears of infidelity and the frustrations of infertility. Form, meanwhile, plumbs profounder depths, aspiring towards registering Lovesong as direct experience. Director David Bolger’s marvellous weaving of choreography and direction, married to Francis O’Connor’s layered set merging memory with now, Suzie Cummins’s evocative lighting, and Joan O’Clery’s shared costumes releasing sub-textual forces to reveal deeper themes. Ghosts of passions past yet ever present, lustful desires even as the older body struggles, how to die in the face of living and how to live in the face of dying, the distance between nostalgia and the hollowed out reality of now, the heart’s questions of legacy. Staging, composition of movement, the interplay of Naoise Dunbar and Zara Devlin as the younger Will and Maggie, juxtaposed yet connected to their older selves, beautifully exemplified by Nick Dunning and Ingrid Craigie, made utterly compelling.

Naoise Dunbar, Ingrid Craigie and Zara Devlin in Lovesong by Abi Morgan. Image, Pato Cassinoni

At times delivery can feel like it’s being recited by a documentarian, or a stage conscious salesman on the Shopping Channel selling life insurance to the over 70s. Then there’s Jack Foster’s score full of New Age reveries opting for easy sentimentality, lacking the warmth and depth of jazz standards like I’ll Be Seeing You which cover the same themes. Yet, these issues aside, Lovesong’s strength lies in the how. If Bolger‘s direction artfully juxtaposes then and now, it’s a superlative cast who make the experience visceral. Naoise Dunbar’s superbly crafted William, a charming, muscle toned, hunk of manly love, hides his insecurities behind jealousy, alcohol, and facts about teeth or time to prevent him talking about his pain. Until it finally erupts decades later. Nick Dunning’s doddery husband, out of his comfort zone, emotionally eviscerating as he delivers a tirade to describe the inevitable that utterly floors you. An effervescent Zara Devlin, irresistible as the youthful good wife, expertly offset by Ingrid Craigie’s superb older Maggie. The ghost of a young girl trapped in an ailing woman’s body, still harbouring desire whilst mothering her troubled husband. The child she had in place of the child she never had, highlighting their deeply complex, if recognisably conventional relationship. Deeper truths revealed in a series of gorgeously choreographed duets where their idealised, youthful selves dance with their present decrepitudes. Hot, heartbreakingly poignant, the limits of language transcended in moments of physical beauty that prove breathtaking.

Nick Dunning, Zara Devlin, Naoise Dunbar, Ingrid Craigie in Lovesong by Abi Morgan. Image, Pato Cassinoni

Cloned from the same gene pool that gave us of The Notebook and Deirdre Kinahan’s marvellous Halcyon Days, Morgan’s ageing, childless couple reflecting on life’s fleeting moments oozes charm and poignancy. The cynically unromantic might find less to love about Lovesong, but even they’ll have to admit its performances are outstanding, its staging superb and its direction bordering on magical. For those of a more amenable persuasion, Lovesong delivers all the feels for hopeless romantics everywhere, and does so with considerable style. Life is fleeting and all we have is each other. Lovesong declares we should savour every moment. Something this wonderful production ensures you do.