Review: Fool for Love (Found 111)

The swansong for the pop-up Found 111 space on Charing Cross road is Sam Shepard‘s 1983 play Fool for Love. It’s a dark, American-underbelly love story, and this production never quite knows whether to play it spooky or straight.

We’re in a seedy motel room, where cowboy Eddie has just arrived, leaving his horses in a trailer in the parking lot, and May sits all messed up on the bed. She’s beside herself – both happy and explosively angry that he’s there.

Over the course of the piece, the duo both fight and embrace. Their relationship seems magnetic in the way they are pulled to and pushed away from each other. Eddie has returned to try to set up a new life with May, while May accuses Eddie of an affair with a woman called the Countess. During the evening they are interrupted by the Countess, May’s new beau Martin and the hovering, ghostly figure of a man – apparently May and Eddie's father – stalking around the small room they are in.

It’s a play full of revelations, but also full of stories and it’s deliberately hard to work out who, if anyone, in this situation is telling the truth. The final moments climax with an unhappy story of how and why Eddie and May met. It feels like a yarn but it leaves you guessing.

The best moments in Simon Evans’ production are when the building itself seems to creep into the action. Doors slam loudly, lights flicker and at the end a fire escape door smashes open to let the cold night into the theatre. Much like the foundations of Eddie and May’s relationship – which are built on lies – the building feels unsteady. Designer Ben Stones – who uses Found 111's awkward angles very well – seems to be letting the space itself have a final word.

There are some very strong performances here, not least from a snarling Adam Rothenberg, as convincing cowboy Eddie. Lydia Wilson as May is also very good, seeming both fragile and monumentally fierce at the same time. But Evans’ production never quite catches the eeriness it should in Shepard’s work. It sits uncomfortably between ghost and love story and as a result it is hard to reconcile the show’s intentions.

Still, Fool for Love is a suitably ambitious piece to end on in a space where ambition has always been the name of the game. Here’s to hoping producer Emily Dobbs will find another interesting central space to add a dynamic, challenging and brilliantly DIY dimension to the West End.

Fool for Love runs at Found 111 until 17 December.

Click here to buy tickets for Fool for Love