'Love Me Do' by Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran
21 October 2014On Saturday evening we were at Watford Palace Theatre to see 'Love Me Do', a new play by Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran. Set in 1962, during the Cuban missile crisis, the play focuses on a young American woman stranded in London, wondering whether she will ever see her husband and children again. Making playful use of physical theatre techniques, and with a cast of five actors creating a host of colourful characters, Co-Directors Brigid Larmour and Shona Morris evoked early 1960s London as an entertaining and slightly sinister foreign country. Marks and Gran cleverly avoided the period drama trap of giving the characters knowing hindsight from a contemporary perspective by using two Americans adrift in London to point out the outdated idiosyncrasies of English life (eg "Yellow Pages?" - "they don't have them here yet"). But, for me, there wasn't quite enough plot and a few ideas seemed under-developed. Calling the main character, who is desperate to get back to Kansas, Dorothy might have had more impact if the 'Wizard of Oz' reference hadn't been blatantly pointed out by one of the characters early in the play. Nevertheless Sara Topham and Robert Curtis made a believable odd-couple thrust together in a crisis - in the manner of a classic Hollywood screwball comedy.
posted by Robin Simpson @ 5:48 pm
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