Reviews

Love, Love, Love (Tour – Manchester)

Love, Love, Love, by Olivia Award winning playwright Mike Bartlett accurately pinpoints the generation gap between wealthy pensioners and their impoverished children.

A Paines Plough/Drum Theatre production directed by James Grieve, its three Acts takes us through a couple’s lives in the years 1967, 1990 and 2011.

The baby-boomers, Sandra and Kenneth meet in the swinging sixties when the Beatles ‘Love, Love, Lovc’ is a big hit and they enjoy cannabis, free love and student grants. They become an item after Sandra ditches his brother. This Act is a bit too long but it is an accurate reflection of the times.

The second act is lively and enthralling as the children of that spoilt generation are reaching maturity themselves  In their comfortable middle-class home, we meet the teenaged kids affected by their parents’ lack of concern even confessing their infidelities in front of them, before the inevitable divorce.  

The section of the play brings forty years of self-centredness to fruition. They are enjoying good pensions in a world of spending reviews and ever-tightening belts. Their middle aged children are damaged, strapped for cash ne’er do wells who still  milk their parents.

Performances by John Heffernan as Kenneth, Daniela Denby-Ashe as Sandra and Rosie Wyatt and James Barrett as their kids are so realistic you come away feeling slightly depressed despite the supposedly happy ending.  What will happen to the next generation, you wonder?

Despite the title, love doesn’t come into it – only selfishness – but it’s well explored and delivered with panache by a talented cast.

– Julia Taylor