Serenading Louie

Synopsis

In Serenading Louie two young, successful and seemingly happy couples are trying to deal with the shadows that haunt their marriages. Carl and Mary are college sweethearts (the football star marries the homecoming queen). Mary is having an affair with Carl's colleague. Carl is desperately trying to convince himself he doesn't care. Meanwhile, Carl's best friend Alex has tired of his chatty and insecure wife, Gabrielle, and has fallen for a 17-year-old college student. When both couples are forced to face the truth about their marriages, their lives are tragically changed forever. In a scorching comment on crumbling American dreams. Lanford Wilson's powerful drama charts the destruction of two young couples as they face up to the deception and infidelity of their friendship.

Our Review:

Glenn Meads - 31 March 2010

Edward Albee's Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf, brilliantly dissects two couples' lives right before your very eyes and Mike Leigh's Abigail's Party, does similar, albeit with a few glasses of Blue Nun and a monstrous lead character. Lanford Wilson's 1970 off Broadway play, here revived by the Donmar Warehouse is a curate's egg, as it never hits the heights of these two classics, but it almost does.

The narrative focuses on two Chicago couples as their lives intersect via the male's friendship. Buddies Alex (Jason Butler Harner) and Carl (Jason O'Mara) lead seemingly different lives, as on the surface one is career driven and hard bitten, and the other is a one-time sport's star dealing with his wife's infidelity.

The women, likewise seem poles apart. Alex's wife Gabrielle (Charlotte Emmerson) plays second fiddle to his career, sleepwalks her way through life and plays the 'b...

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