Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Angela Simms, Danny O’Brien.
Love, so the poets, the romantics and the occasional purposeful song-writer will attest, is indeed a many splendid thing; it is the joy of lost reason, of the possible loss of everything you thought about yourself and the conquering of the soul. Love isn’t about the physical act between people, love is what you are willing to do for another human being, what you are prepared to sacrifice to make someone happy, to look upon their face and hope for all the colours that a rainbow can provide, love is the most reckless and untrustworthy emotion and we should strive to see it happen more often and with whomever.
It is the miracle and celebration of opposites of the everyday which makes Joanne Sherryden’s bitter-sweet comedy such a joy to be back once more in the company of Danny O’Brien and Angela Simms as they bring The Rainbow Connection back to the Liverpool stage.
The love that this play exudes from its very core is one that resounds, an impossibility to not get caught up emotionally in the lives of two very different people, but ones to whom develop the most scared of bonds, friendship despite all that is against them. It is love that is not won easily, both are broken in their own way, one by the nature of her submission to an outside force who cannot even acknowledge her existence, who keeps her locked away inside a tower and who possibly even resents her presence, the reminder of what should not be, and the other, trapped by his own despairing guilt, loss and the pain he feels he has inflicted upon himself and others. It is the complex beauty of the way they make each other see the world to which healing may begin and one that any wish upon a rainbow can provide.
It takes the right chemistry to bring a two hander to its fruition, so much rides on the two people on stage that a play can fall or rise to its genuine place in the audience’s hearts in a single look that passes between them. There is arguably nothing finer than two actors who make each other comfortable with their own ability, and in Ms. Simms and Mr. O’ Brien and their presentation of the gobby but loveable Shelly and the heartbroken Joe, there is the magic of the theatre presented in one all too brief encounter of acting supremacy.
A treasure of a play, one that when first presented at the Unity Theatre all those years ago was considered rightly as beautiful, funny, full of pathos and humanity, has lost none of its edge and sparkle, to which the combination of all that you desire from theatre is held up as a shining beacon to bask in. The Rainbow Connection is that play which celebrates the loss of loneliness and despite the differences socially, respective of sexual preference and thought, can still prove that love, indeed, is a many splendid thing!
Ian D. Hall