Lovesong ****

Lovesong is the physical theatre company, Frantic Assembly’s latest venture in collaboration with writer Abi Morgan. Of course, an established playwright in her own right, but more notable for her work in film and tv, this has notably influenced the unique style of Lovesong.

Lovesong tells the story of one couple at the beginning and end of their lives together. This pure form is perhaps what makes it such a tearjerker, it takes just five minutes to fall in love with these lovers, which is important as you’ll be in tears within ten, floods by the end. The ushers even offer boxes of tissues after the show, due to popular demand, I was told. The formula is played with cleverly; the crossover between times is achieved seamlessly so that the characters seem like time travellers in this haunting exploration of memory. Of course, at the centre of this is Frantic Assembly’s gorgeous choreography. Everyday objects become triggers for this action; the actors emerge out of wardrobes or fridges sharing the same look of longing they hold for their lover with their younger counterpart.

The movement possess an entrancing fluidity. Refrains are used, the physical familiarity of lovers couldn’t be more apparent than in this choreography. I admit I shouldn’t have been surprised by the elder actors’ physical prowess, yet I feel they deserve an especial mention – perhaps they aren’t as sharp as the younger couple, but this ensemble wouldn’t leave the same impression without their rekindled energy working together with the younger couple’s. It lends a love which has grown old with the characters, a sense of eternal youth.

A production like this is dependent upon the marriage of movement and writing. But, Morgan achieves something altogether very different with silence. The silence is established from the beginning as being as vocal as any words which two people that know each other inside out could share. As a result, I feel the audience response is injected with something of them; we each hear something different in the silence.

It is an achievement to compel an audience to focus upon the little things like this, a quality I would relate more to film or television. Seemingly aware of this, the play opens with a projection of the title, almost like a title sequence. The play itself stands alone so well, I question the necessity of this device. The flight of the starling flock is a sweet metaphor, present throughout all the years they’ve lived there, and will remain after they’ve gone, almost like a child reminding us of their enduring sadness to have not had one. Yet I find it somewhat patronising that they feel the audience requires this visualisation aid, when we have sensibility enough to imagine the memories being recalled.

Otherwise, the production values work effortlessly with the play to create something which can only be described as beautiful. Their ‘lovesong’ is never heard in the absorbing soundtrack, remaining a private thing to them. Hensel’s design, a stage carpeted and coloured with leaves, could be used to greater effect, but focuses and binds their memories immortally to their garden. Graham and Hogget had a wonderfully lucid vision directing and choreographing this play which has been achieved with the craft of an artist, the brush strokes lingering in your mind’s eyes, long after you’ve dried your eyes.

13 ****

Imagine there’s a box. And inside that box is God. You can look inside, but be killed instantly afterwards; or live without knowing what’s waiting in the dark.

The question of this box dominates the set of Mike Bartlett’s newest play 13, in which everyone wakes up at the exact same time having had the exact same dream - or rather nightmare. At the centre of a swiftly moving re-imagining of nightmarish current events (student protests, war in the Middle East, riots), is John, a question in himself. A man who stands upon a bucket in the park preaching the power of belief, and rallying immense support as an internet sensation, Bartlett illustrates the place that social media plays in uniting our ‘protest’ generation. John (a welsh William Wallace played enigmatically by Trystan Gravelle) becomes the messiah of a new-age belief system: the power of the individual, working together for common good.

John argues that belief makes the individual and it is this multiplicity which the characters thrive upon as a unit and gives this play an incredible vivacity which absolutely captures this decade. One could argue that the cast and content is far too sprawling for any emotional engagement to leak through but the vignettes are so sophistically interwoven and extremely engaging to a relevant viewer (i.e. I could have started a student riot then and there). Bartlett’s play is one that makes you want to scream out (or like the pensioner does, throw a trolley at a bank) for the state we’re in. This is drastically contrasted with the stasis of the second half, more parliament than play, as John and the Tory Prime Minister debate the dichotomy of the country: is it right for thousands to die at war, if it will perhaps save thousands from death by nuclear weapons?

The thing hidden in the box is this grey area: the distinction between right and wrong. Mark Henderson’s moody blue lighting illustrates the dominating political backdrop throughout that is exactly that: a filter. The PM, played spot on by Geraldine James, is the manager of right and wrong, not the bringer; and must make unpopular compromises. As a reflection of this dose of reality, Thea Sharrock’s abstract conception of 13 terrifies the viewer with the idea of democracy is little more than a dream. Tom Scutt’s towering design captures the unease of events translated through the dark, hard images of insomnia. Thankfully the edgy animation of 13 reminds us that perhaps we have finally woken up and won’t let this nightmare haunt us any longer.

The artful combination of Sharrock and Bartlett is so contemporary there’s a Boris bike onstage and a pensioner singing Rhianna. 13 is simply unmissable, contextually the play of the decade.