Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Claire Coull, Neil Summerville, Emma Ley.
Love is what remains when the world no longer makes sense, it is the spark in the fire of inspiration, it is the beauty in the chaos and anarchy that makes us give everything we can to those whose lives we cherish. Love is that moment when your breath is taken away by the person you see in pain, knowing you will do anything to stop it from continuing.
As part of a three-play evening at the Casa Theatre, David Armstrong’s Love was perhaps the one that resonated most with an audience who understood what it means to reminisce with that one person to whom you have shared virtually your entire life with. A meeting on The Bench where courtship followed innocence, where life soon becomes a whisper lost in the haze of other’s continuing day; it is too love that we all hope for will guide us through the maze of existence, one that David Armstrong’s beautifully balanced script delivers with effortless charm.
It is seen more of a novelty in this particular age of cut and run at the slightest problem, too quick to move on to the next fix of what people constitute as Love in the modern age, that marriage or togetherness should last beyond the fleeting glimpse of reckless passion, love perhaps is never wanting to see pain in someone’s face, love is knowing that your life, such as it is, is nothing without that person in it.
It is in these thoughts that Mr. Armstrong really captures the persona of love’s strange fondness, and in the stories of Mary and Philip, love is a reason to keep coming back to The Bench once a year, at the same time and day, to talk about old times and to make sure their grand-daughter Elizabeth still remembers them.
In Claire Coull and Neil Summerville, Love is more than a word, it is a dynamic, two old pensioners who saw the world through the eyes of children as the evil of Fascism destroyed all that they understood in London, through to the swinging 60s and across their marriage, love is what kept them together, love could not tear them apart.
Beautifully written and staged, if there was a dry eye in the Casa Theatre at the reveal then it was only because they had a brick where a heart should beat, Love is not a passing fancy, it is forever, Mr. Armstrong shows that off superbly.
Ian D. Hall