Review: Love In The Lockdown (online)

The constant creativity of artists trying to make work however hostile the environment has been one
of the most cheering aspects of lockdown and it's resulted in some interesting hybrid forms.

This latest, from writer and musician Clare Norburn, TV director Nicholas Renton, and actors Rachel
Stirling and Alec Newman is a cross between a TV romcom and theatre, with a bit of medieval music
from Norburn's early instrument group The Telling thrown in. Based on the two episodes I have
watched, it doesn't quite rise to being more than the sum of these parts, but it has a gentle sincerity
that makes it fine to pass the time with.

The structure is original: short episodes (all filmed on Zoom) are being released on YouTube on the
year-on anniversary of the day and time on which they are set. The March 4 instalment is the first
tentative Zoom chat between Giovanni (Newman) and Emilia (Stirling) who have met at a dinner
party the previous night. "The virus" lurks in the background of their minds; the nightmare is just
beginning. The second episode, set at 6pm on March 5, which will be available from that time on
that day, has the first death from Covid-19 in the news headlines. Lockdown is on its way.

Subsequent episodes – there are nine in total – are all due to be released in real time, a year on from
2020, until May 23, when the whole thing is available for viewing. The format asks that, like a TV
soap, you become involved enough in the lives of the characters to care what happens next. It also
deliberately conjures the antecedents of Boccaccio's Decameron, a work written after a 14th century
plague about a group of people telling themselves stories to pass the time during an epidemic. This
is supposedly the book that brings our 21 st century lovers together; her early music group is
recording music from the period, he pretends he is writing a play on the subject.

The execution of all this is a little clunky. The conversations between the two of them work well but
in order to convey information quickly enough, Giovanni has to wander round his house talking to us
– his audience – in a series of monologues which are too obviously a way of filling in his thoughts
and moving on the plot. He talks a lot, Emilia (at the moment) much less, and the playing of The
Telling frames the action. It doesn't quite hang together.

On the other hand, Renton directs with practised fluency and the performances are appealing.
Stirling so far hasn't had much more to do than look wide-eyed and slightly nervous, but she does
this with great charm, and there are hints that her character's plight in lockdown as a freelance
musician unable to work may open up in revealing ways. Giovanni is fantastically irritating and self-
obsessed, but Newman, somewhat against the odds, manages to make him endearing. His story too
looks as if it will twist in ways that will allow him to reveal greater depth and perhaps some truths
about how hard it has been to survive lockdown in the real world. It's a drama that needs to raise its
game to have any real impact, but only time will tell if it succeeds.