Reviews

LOL (Lots of Love)

This show about love, dating, connecting online and in person, provides a welcome antidote to other work on offer in Edinburgh this year that tries to show love as something for members of an exclusive club, a self-selecting elite composed of those proving themselves cool, or even hot, enough to be allowed in. ‘Love is wanting to be loved. Love is needing to be loved’, goes LOL’s refrain. That’s what it is.

An astonishingly multi-talented cast dance their hearts (and their lungs) out for 70 minutes in a blistering mix of beauty and wit. Facebook, txt, Twitter, e-mail and dating language and etiquette are all ruthlessly but artfully mined to create an accompanying text that makes you laugh with joy and cringe with recognition. I shall not quickly forget the hilarious sequence where two e-mail correspondents jerk to the sound of typing at a computer keyboard – one of them clearly a Mac, to judge by the ‘send’ notification punctuating the action.

This is dance theatre as observational comedy – in many ways it’s a good old-fashioned comedy of manners. It’s also captivating, cool, generous-hearted, inventive, smart and avant-garde. Love belongs to everyone, not least those who live on the margins of loneliness or articulacy or conventional beauty. This desperately warm, funny and life-affirming company-devised show is for all of them – and for everyone else too.

– Craig Singer