Skip to main content

Theatre Review Insightful reminder of society’s fragility

Love And Other Acts Of Violence
Donmar Warehouse

A YOUNG man is overzealously shouting at a woman over the noise of a house party about the scandal of inflated university vice-chancellor pay while other staff struggle on low incomes.

It’s a very current conversation, a nod to the University College Union’s (UCU) ongoing campaign, and one of the only clues that this new play by Cordelia Lynn, finely directed by Elayce Ismail, is set in modern-era Britain.

As an opening scene to an otherwise extremely dark story, it’s hilarious in its familiarity of the social awkwardness that comes with trying to speak, least of all flirt, with anyone where the music is too loud.

Add to this a faux pas about cunts in posh flats and everyone’s in stitches.

But our protagonists, he (Tom Mothersdale), an idealistic activist poet, and she (Abigail Weinstock), a Jewish physicist, who end up in a relationship and living together, are anything but the perfect match, and at times you’re left questioning how convincing a couple they are.

Yet their increasingly toxic relationship seems to coincide with a society unravelling outside the confines of their new build.

A society that appears to have succumbed to a neonazi uprising where she is no longer safe, and where their home is eventually requisitioned by these new dark powers that be.

It’s an insightful reminder of society’s fragility that even the most comfortable of Western bubbles can be burst at any time. But for her it’s also the triggering of ancestral trauma.

The play’s epilogue flashes back to Lemberg in November 1918. The scene is a seemingly idyllic family home inhabited by her great-grandfather Tatte (Richard Katz), her grandmother Baba, also played by Weinstock, and Baba’s younger brothers (Daniel Lawson and Charlie Tumbridge).

But darkness is also at the door, threatening to break in. The city is caught in the middle of the Polish-Ukrainian war and the brutal pogrom against its Jewish population.

Daringly uncensored in its depiction of violence and anti-semitism, there are points that you want to cover your ears and close your eyes.

Yet the stark realism of the scene, which sees the ceiling of their home crumbling down around them, should nevertheless be applauded.

Making her professional debut, Weinstock impressively goes through the gamut of emotions in the taxing duel roles while Mothersdale, who also doubles up as a murdering Polish solider, is the perfect nemesis lover. A dark reality check.

Plays until November 27 2021. [email protected] or (020) 3282-3808.

OWNED BY OUR READERS

We're a reader-owned co-operative, which means you can become part of the paper too by buying shares in the People’s Press Printing Society.

 

 

Become a supporter

Fighting fund

You've Raised:£ 13,288
We need:£ 4,712
3 Days remaining
Donate today