Love - the Musical - The Musical

Synopsis

Neville is 80 and slowly wasting away in an unremarkable care home. His life seems to be heading for a predictable end until Margaret arrives for a short stay. Margaret, 78 and terrified of what will happen to her, meets Neville over tea and singing, and their lives change forever. Then Neville suggests they escape for a night out on the town..

Our Review:

4 June 2008

It is hard to convey the overwhelming awfulness of Love at the Lyric – a selection of badly sung pop song snippets by an over-age cast in a nursing home – but I’ll do my best. Instead of making you feel good about getting old, the show is the most powerful theatrical argument I’ve yet encountered for compulsory euthanasia.

The rambling ragbag is adapted by David Farr from an Icelandic “original” by the Vesturport directors Gisli Orn Gardarsson and Vikingur Kristjansson, and hinges on a late-blooming love affair between ancient Neville (Julian Curry) who suffers from dementia and a newly arrived widow (Anna Calder-Marshall) whose callous businessman son (Jonathan McGuinness) has dumped her in the home with an arm injury.

At one point the couple “escape” to the theatre – the Lyric, Hammersmith – fetching up in the front stalls to watch three crumbling inmates in black shawls perform an embarrassing sketch version of Chekhov’s Three Sisters...