Sandras Rolle in dem Stück ist auch alles andere als empathisch angelegt und Amy Ryan spielt das überspitzt bis zum Exzess.
Dass Kenneth im 3. Akt "I want to die with you" sagt, ist wirklich erstaunlich, wo sie doch konstant egoistisch und selbstzentriert durch's Leben geht.
Die Attraktion im 1. Akt kam für mich schon überzeugend rüber.
Im 2. und 3. Akt lässt das familiäre Chaos die Attraktion natürlich in den Hintergrund geraten, trotzdem kommen sich beide gerade im 3. Akt wieder nahe, aber Kenneth ist definitiv der "romantischere, weichere" Charakter im Stück. Sandra ist und bleibt eine "Rippe", die sich den Moment "nimmt" - das wirkt auf ihre Umgebung durchaus unterkühlt.
Für mich ist die Stimmung und die Atmosphäre der Textvorlage was die Chemie zwischen den Rollen angeht ziemlich gut getroffen - auch da fragt man sich nach dem 1. Akt, was die 2 eigentlich (noch) aneinander finden.

The Silent Generation Speaks Out in Love, Love, Love

SUZANNA BOWLING OCTOBER 27, 2016

“What did you stand for Peace? Love? Nothing except being able to do whatever the f— you wanted.”


Children of Baby Boomers do not feel loved or even wanted, Mike Bartlett, who penned Cock and King Charles III, new comedy Love, Love, Love, produced by the Roundabout Theatre Company, and playing at the Laura Pels Theatre, is witty, intelligent, insightful and speaks volumes. Love, Love, Love, plays in three acts set in 1967, 1990 and 2011. Each one thanks to director Michael Mayer (Spring Awakening), gets funnier and funnier, while breaking open the tragedy of how immorally into ourselves we have become.

Richard Armitage, Amy Ryan, Ben Rosenfield, Zoe Kazan
Richard Armitage, Amy Ryan, Ben Rosenfield, Zoe Kazan

In act one we meet Henry (Alex Hurt) and Kenneth ( Richard Armitage) his younger self serving brother. Henry tries to get rid of Kenneth to no avail so he can sleep with his girlfriend Sandra ( Amy Ryan). Sandra is a free spirit who drinks too much, smoked pot and could careless about the consequences, much like Kenneth. Sandra and Henry are complete opposites, but when she takes one look at Kenneth, you know Henry is the loser of this match. In 1990 they’re married, working and earning big bucks and disregard the feelings of their children, Rose and Jamie ( Zoe Kazan and Ben Rosenfield). It is Rose’s sixteenth birthday and her parents have no regard for how she feels. Both Kenneth and Sandra have cheated on each other and decide it’s time to get a divorce. In 2011, Henry has dies and Kenneth and Sandra have damaged their children’s lives to the point of no return still more into who they were back in 1967.

The cast is perfect with Zoe Kazan is breaking ground as the emotionally starved, highly angry 16-year-old Rose. Many will be able to connect with her plight. In act three when Rose confronts her narcissistic parent who have avoided parenting their response is like cold water. Each actor here manages to bring the most to their role, letting us deeply into the tragedy of where America has gone.



Mr. Mayer makes Love, Love, Love seem like an episode or several episodes of “Love American Style” gone painstakingly bad.

This play needs to be seen, produced and shown to a public that needs to laugh, needs to think and needs to be shown the truth. Mike Bartlett is a playwright to take note of, much like Tom Stoppard and Neil Simon.

I expect this to transfer to Broadway and be high on the list of nominations come award season.

Love, Love, Love: Roundabout Theatre Company, Laura Pels Theatre, 111 W. 46th St. until Dec. 18

LOVE, LOVE, LOVE
POSTED ON OCT 27, 2016 IN THEATER REVIEWS

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By Sandi Durell

All you need is the Beatles’ Love, Love, Love . . . and this humor-filled play by Mike Bartlett (of recent Broadway success’ King Charles III) to set the record straight about the 1960s flower child era, a time of exploration, freedom and. . . narcissism. Currently part of Roundabout Theatre Company’s new season at the Laura Pels Theatre, Love looks to be one of the comedy highlights of this season.

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Beginning in 1967, in a somewhat shabby London apartment, we find Henry (Alex Hurt), a straight laced working guy, who’s invited 19 year old free spirited Sandra (Amy Ryan) for a visit with the hopes of bedding her, but he must first rid himself of his drop out of Oxford free-thinking younger brother Kenneth (Richard Armitage), his new roomy. It isn’t more than a few minutes that pass after she arrives that it’s obvious the already stoned Sandra would rather bed Kenneth.

Act I (after a short intermission) quickly transforms into Act II where the time has flown and it’s 1990; Ken and Sandra have amazingly physically morphed into adults, now an upwardly mobile married couple in a nice apartment living with their two teenage kids, 16 year old Jamie (Ben Rosenfield and Rose (Zoe Kazan), his 14 year old sister. There’s lots of teenage angst, whining and crying from Rose whose boyfriend has left her, and the unrelenting all about me chatter from the now grown up (but not really) selfish Mum, Sandra, who has obviously made a mess of her kids’ lives. As the couple admits their infidelities in front of their children, offering up wine and cigarettes to them, Sandra announces they’re getting a divorce. Serious though the topic may be, the laughs keep coming.

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By the time we get to Act III (after another short intermission) it’s 2010, at Kenneth’s luxurious country home where he lives with his problematic son who has shut down emotionally, while an older, calmer Rose arrives followed by the same old Mum who runs roughshod over everyone in her path still believing the world revolves around her.

People don’t change, just situations, as the free wheeling 60s generation leaves its mark of dysfunction.

The comedy is superbly portrayed by this well-chosen cast – – Armitage and Ryan the perfect ying and yang, ever so delicately brought to life by Michael Mayer’s fine directorial hand. Derek McLane’s three well-designed sets are right on the money as are Susan Hilferty’s costumes.

Love, Love, Love – Laura Pels Theatre (Roundabout Theatre Company), 111 West 46 St. 212 719-1300 – 2 hours, 5 minutes (2 intermissions)

Theatre in Review: Love, Love, Love (Roundabout Theatre Company)



Zoe Kazan, Amy Ryan. Photo: Joan Marcus

Decade after decade, selfishness never goes out of style; so goes the message of Love, Love, Love. Mike Bartlett, last seen in New York with his "future history" play, King Charles III, returns with a once-over-lightly -- very lightly -- excursion through nearly fifty years of social history, setting his characters against varying backgrounds defined by changing social mores. The playwright's indictment of superficial baby-boomer values doesn't quite land, since it comes wrapped in a slick comedy filled with characters who are little more than human targets for barbed commentary. Cheers to director Michael Mayer and his gifted cast for keeping things lively as these shallow, self-obsessed people misbehave across three different time frames.

Act I is set in a grungy London flat, circa 1967. It is rented by Henry, who is 24 and rather sullen; that last quality, combined with a leather jacket, has attracted the attention of Sandra, a 19-year-old Oxford student. (That leather jacket reminds her of Joe Orton.) Sandra has just been sacked from her summer job as a store clerk for smoking pot while waiting on a customer. ("I thought that's in the spirit of the place, it's groovy, very now, they'll like it," she says, by way of explanation. "But the customer complained, didn't he, bloody bastard, and they kicked me out on the street straight away.") Henry has big plans for a night with Sandra, but first he has to get rid of Kenneth, his brother, who is spending his summer vacation from Oxford lazing on Henry's couch. Neither threats nor bribery do the trick, and as soon as Sandra lays eyes on Kenneth, Henry is forgotten; within a minute, she is making plans for her and Kenneth to live and travel together. "Sometimes you have to do what feels right," she says, callously, explaining that Henry will get over it. Indeed, Sandra has found a soulmate in Kenneth, who is ready to swing with the '60s: "Nothing like this has ever happened before. The laws are constantly being overthrown, the boundaries of what's possible, the music's exploding, the walls collapsing. That's what's going on. That's what's changing. We travel, do what we want, wear what we like. Enjoy it. Experiment."

The 1960s have been so thoroughly strip-mined for easy ironies by opportunistic writers that the subject is pretty much exhausted, and listening to Kenneth and Sandra cloak their self-serving actions in starry-eyed pronouncements about the groovy future isn't much fun, since we already know how rapidly their psychedelic bubble will burst. What tension this scene offers is provided by Mayer's taut direction and the stellar work of Amy Ryan, who makes it blindingly clear that, at 19, Sandra is already a handful, whether coming on to both brothers at once or recalling how she verbally savaged the cop who found her sleeping all night in a park.

Act II swaps out one set of clichés for another, as the action advances to 1990. Margaret Thatcher's reign as prime minister is in decline as the country is torn apart over her proposed poll tax. Kenneth and Sandra have morphed into overscheduled, overworked careerists, neither of whom has a free minute for their highly strung daughter, Rose, or their trouble-making son, Jamie. Staged on the eve of Rose's 16th birthday, with a family party that begins in recriminations and ends in a series of shocker revelations, this act has some of the comic ferocity of an Alan Ayckbourn play. "We live in Reading. Something's gone wrong," announces Kenneth, trying to get to the bottom of things as he surveys the family chaos. Reacting to a volley of abuse from her daughter, Sandra says, "I'm a bitch, I love this swearing, it's very sweet, isn't it Kenneth? She really is growing up." Following yet another instance of too much information shared in front of the kids, Kenneth asks, "Why are you involving them?" "Because technically, we're a family," Sandra replies.

Act III catches up with the characters in 2010, when the scattered members of this far-flung clan reassemble for a funeral. The action is dominated by Rose, now in her late thirties, who makes a request: Kenneth and Sandra should buy her a house. As she explains to her stunned parents, she belongs to the generation of diminished expectations, getting by on yearly earnings that constitute barely a third of her father's retirement income -- she even accuses Kenneth and Sandra of betraying her by supporting her career as a violinist, which has failed to provide her with a decent living. Her argument quickly descends into a full-on attack: "You didn't change the world, you bought it. Privatized it. What did you stand for? Peace? Love? Nothing except being able to do whatever the fuck you wanted." As with the rest of Love, Love, Love, this argument, if sometimes wittily and forcefully presented, is too well-worn to have very much impact.

If Love, Love, Love has only the usual things to say about changing times and values, it remains eminently watchable, thanks to the efforts of Mayer, a fine design team, and a cast equipped to lend Bartlett's arguments a power that they don't natively possess. Among the men, Richard Armitage succeeds the best, cannily charting Kenneth's evolution from wide-eyed '60s experimenter, ready to soak up any and all experiences, to weary, nerve-wracked husband and father and, later, retiree living in splendid isolation with Jamie, who has never managed the trick of growing up. He is at his finest when, fed up with Rose's neediness, he fights back, saying, "Why did you listen to us? We're your parents...Why the hell did you take any notice of what we told you? You're supposed to rebel. That's what you're supposed to do." In contrast, Alex Hurt doesn't have enough to do as Henry, who gets stiffed in love, then drops out of the action. Ben Rosenfield does his best as Jamie, who suffers from some ill-defined and hard-to-believe emotional disturbance that makes it impossible for him to thrive in the world. (It almost looks as if Bartlett wants us to believe that Kenneth and Sandra's marital problems have made Jamie autistic.)

Both female roles offer more opportunities, which are seized with relish here. Ryan's Sandra is scorching throughout, whether using Russia, the atom bomb, and Vietnam as good reasons why she and Kenneth should run off together; staggering, under the influence, across the stage with a birthday cake, which she proceeds to cut into chunks and toss at her loved ones; or staring at the furious Rose in blank incomprehension and calmly asking her for yet another top-up on her white wine. Zoe Kazan's Rose is at first a tinderbox of adolescent rage, her face permanently poised to collapse in a flood of tears, and, later, chic and composed, if no less ready to denounce her parents as agents of ruin.

The production's design cleverly makes note of changing times and the characters' shifting circumstances. Derek McLane's scenic design features Henry's filthy, cluttered flat; Kenneth and Sandra's posh suburban home, dominated by large and expensive-looking paintings; and Kenneth's stately country home. (Interestingly, the first set is the most detailed, complete with walls and ceiling; the characters' increasing wealth is suggested using a few elegant details.) Susan Hilferty's costume designs constitute a mini-history of fashion; they include an orange-and-purple geometric pattern mini-dress and blood-red success suit for Sandra, and wildly different looks -- a school uniform and chic black pants and sweater -- for Rose at different stages. David Lander's lighting is typically efficient. Kai Harada's sound design includes a number of era-establishing musical selections and excerpts from television broadcasts. If The Beatles' "All You Need is Love" is mined for heavy irony, the fault is Bartlett's, not the sound designer's.

If you're going to indict an entire generation for its shallow values, your play is going to need more heft than this slick, superficial effort. There's no real social commentary here, just a pretext for his characters' atrocious carrying-on. Bartlett, happily, isn't interested in sentimentally mourning the idealism of the '60s, but his approach, with its reflexive cynicism, doesn't yield sufficiently compelling results. Kenneth and Sandra are so two-dimensional -- and they develop in such unsurprising ways -- that, without this cast, one would have little interest in their fates. Indeed, we leave them as we found them, still making messes for others to clean up. It's a too-easy conclusion to a too-easy play. -- David Barbour

Love
Posted By Stanford Friedman on Oct 29, 2016
Zoe Kazan and Ben Rosenfield. Photo by Joan Marcus.
Zoe Kazan and Ben Rosenfield. Photo by Joan Marcus.
By Stanford Friedman
New York audiences were introduced to playwright Mike Bartlett last year, when his excellent King Charles III came to Broadway to make scathing fun of Britain’s royal family. Now, an earlier play, his 2011 Love Love Love has crossed the pond. It, too, is concerned with family matters, though the focus this time is on the upper middle class. If not as ambitious as his later work, it is equally brutal. In this harsh comedy, Love Love Love is code for Lust Anger Regret.
The action takes place over three acts and 44 years. Act I, set in 1967, finds brothers Henry (Alex Hurt) and Kenneth (Richard Armitage) in Henry’s squalid London flat, deep in sibling rivalry. Ken, in a dark red robe, is feeling groovy. Henry is stressed after a day of work, and when we learn that his girlfriend, Sandra (Amy Ryan), is coming over, we can understand why he wants to get Ken out of the picture. The inevitable, of course, occurs. Sandra takes an immediate, pot-fueled, liking to Ken, and Henry fades into the background – his shirt even matches the color of the walls. “Your face looks flat,” Sandra tells him, shortly before he vanishes all together.
Television has taught us that the couple who start out wild will eventually settle down and become responsible, caring adults. Act II turns that reasoning on its head. Fast forwarding to 1990, Ken and Sandra have indeed married and taken up residence in an attractive suburban house. But, we are firmly in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf territory here, as we witness a drunken evening at home. Instead of terrorizing a clueless colleague and his timid wife as George and Martha did, Ken and Sandra set their sights on their own clueless teenage son, Jamie (Ben Rosenfield), and timid daughter, Rose (Zoe Kazan). Bartlett chooses not just any night, but probably the worst night of their collective lives; the family pulling further apart with every glass of vino.
Television also instructs us that the children of dysfunctional parents will somehow overcome their upbringing. Act III, set in 2011, subverts that premise. Jamie and Rose are all grown up, but deeply damaged in their own separate ways, with the now aged Ken and Sandra willing to let it ride. There are pangs of remorse, but these parents are ultimately more concerned about their own twisted happiness.
The entire ensemble turns in strong performances. Actors in time-lapse comedies, they all grow up so fast. We see too little of Mr. Hurt as the absent Henry. He was a fine loser, but serves the play only as a catalyst to spark the other characters into action. Mr. Armitage finds Ken’s inner child and nurtures him into a charming, successful business man who is also a complete failure. The always great Amy Ryan makes Sandra a hot mess, sheathed in an icy exterior. Teenage Rose is a disaster waiting to happen and when we encounter her at age 37, Ms. Kazan finds just the right mix of pathos and obnoxiousness. Jamie is the evening’s only wholly sympathetic character and Mr. Rosenfield gives a touching performance. His 14-year-old self, set free with wine and cigarettes, is as priceless as his adult personality is worrisome.
The leaps in time and setting are visually delightful, thanks to the smart period costuming of Susan Hilferty and Derek McLane’s ever upwardly-mobile scenic design. The compromise, however, is that the transformations require a 10 minute intermission between each short act. This effectively kills any pacing that director Michael Mayer was hoping to establish. The experience is more like binge watching three episodes of a BBC comedy, than viewing a cohesive piece of theater. On the night I was there, an older couple in front of me seemed to take the play to heart during these timeouts. He played solitaire on his phone, she paged through her program.
Love, Love, Love – By Mike Bartlett; directed by Michael Mayer.
WITH: Richard Armitage (Kenneth), Alex Hurt (Henry), Zoe Kazan (Rose), Ben Rosenfield (Jamie) and Amy Ryan (Sandra).
Scenic Design by Derek McLane, Lighting by David Lander, Costumes by Susan Hilferty, Sound by Kai Harada; Davin De Santis, production stage manager. The Roundabout Theatre Company in association with Daryl Roth Productions at the Laura Pels Theatre, 111 West 46th Street, 212.719.1300, http://www.roundabouttheatre.org/Shows- ... -Love.aspx. Through December 18. Running Time: 2 hours 5 minutes.

Forbes on Film & Footlights
Sunday, October 30, 2016
Love, Love, Love (Roundabout Theatre Company)




By Harry Forbes

Mike Bartlett’s 2010 play, which had an acclaimed production at the Royal Court in London in 2012, may, in essence, be a scathing indictment of the baby boomer generation, but it also happens to be one of the most amusing shows in town.

In three acts, the playwright – last represented on Broadway earlier this year with the excellent “King Charles III” – wittily charts the relationship of Kenneth (Richard Armitage) and Sandra (Amy Ryan) over the course of 40 years.

When we first meet them in 1967, he’s an Oxford-bound slacker who steals her away from his dullish brother (Alex Hurt) at whose flat he’s been shamelessly crashing, while she’s a drugged-up free-spirit who sets her cap on Kenneth as soon as they meet. In the second act, 23 years later, they’re a bickering couple living an affluent upper middle-class life in Reading, but utterly self-absorbed, barely taking the time to listen to their teenage children, aspiring violinist Rose (Zoe Kazan) and emotionally troubled Jamie (Ben Rosenfield). In the last act, Kenneth and Sandra are amicably divorced, but the children are a mess, financially insecure and aimless. The parents are oblivious to the roles they have played in shaping their offspring.

Performances are razor sharp, and the cast ages believably over the time span. Ryan is particularly brilliant, delivering Sandra’s funny and thoughtlessly callous lines for maximum effect. Armitage captures Kenneth’s narcissism and self-absorption to a tee. Their children are no less sharply characterized, Rosenfield embodying the unhappy layabout, and Kazan transforming from vulnerable teen to embittered 37 year old who ultimately accuses her parents of ruining them.

In fact, when finally Rose outlines her parents’ destructive behavior, it was disconcerting to hear several audience members at my performance continuing to laugh oblivious that the mood had suddenly changed, another sad indication that many of today’s sitcom weaned audiences just can’t seem to make the leap from funny to tragic.

Derek McLane has designed three wonderfully varied settings which, along with Susan Hilferty’s costumes and David Lander’s lighting, tell you in an instant all you need to know about these characters' lives.

Director Michael Mayer brings out the humor and underlying pathos of Barlett’s clever script in a masterfully paced production.

Laura Pels Theatre at the The Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre, 111 W 46th Street; 212-719-1300 or roundabouttheatre.org)

NOV 1, 2016 @ 04:28 PM 55 VIEWS The Little Black Book of Billionaire Secrets
Best Theater Of The Month: 'Love, Love, Love', 'Midsummer', John Mulaney & Nick Kroll




Lee Seymour , CONTRIBUTOR
I cover theater, money, and their ongoing love-hate relationship

Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.
New York’s 2016-17 theater season is in full swing, and I’m rounding up the best of what I saw in October (which includes everything on Broadway but not entirely everything Off). Plus! Commentary on their financial outlook and business models.


Love, Love, Love – Off Broadway

The latest from young British firebrand Mike Bartlett is a delightful doozy. It’s not as expansive as his Tony-nominated King Charles III, nor as brutal as his Cock, but it’s funnier than both and hits closer to home. Anyone who’s ever been labeled a Baby Boomer, or the child thereof, will find much to laugh (and possibly cry) about. Richard Armitage and Amy Ryan lead an excellent cast through five decades of dysfunctional family life, gleefully indicting the Boomers while mostly avoiding preachiness. Armitage is so much better than those horrible Hobbit movies would suggest, Ryan does mesmerizing narcissism better than anyone, and Zoe Kazan is the broken heart trying to keep them together. (Playing through Dec 18th at Roundabout’s Laura Pels Theatre)

Roundabout doesn’t publish its Off Broadway grosses, but representatives for the show said that sales “continue to exceed expectations.” Even without the nonprofit status inuring it, the show could easily have found a healthy life in a commercial theater, given both the cast and the playwright’s track record. Critically, it’s the most well-received of Roundabout’s current offerings (which include Holiday Inn and The Cherry Orchard) earning the Critic’s Pick distinction from the New York Times.

Theater and Broadway with an added Christian perspective.
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2016
Off-Broadway Review: Love, Love, Love


Love, Love, Love
By Mike Bartlett
Directed by Michael Mayer
Roundabout Theatre Company
through Dec. 18

By Lauren Yarger
What's It All About?
Three looks at a family, beginning in 1967 during the height of Beatle mania when Kenneth (Richard Armitage "The Hobbit") and Sandra (Amy Ryan, who has multiple stage credits, but who is probably best know for TV's "The Office") meet. Sandra actually is with Kenneth's more conservative brother, Henry (Alex Hurt), but when Kenneth arrives, the chemistry can't be denied and the couple refuses to deny their need for each other -- which might actually bring a bigger high than the booze and drugs they like in the free-living culture they have embraced. Henry isn't happy, but is wise enough to realize that losing Sandra might be the best thing that ever happened to him.

In a second scene, we see the couple as unhappy parents of problematic teenagers Jamie (Ben Rosenfield) and Rose (Zoe Kazan). Sandra and Kenneth can't seem to get their minds off of themselves and their own needs long enough to pay attention to their kids, even though they supposedly are celebrating Rose's 16th birthday. It seems that a new weed -- infidelity -- has has crept into the marriage as well, and has choked out the notion that "love is all you need."

In the third vignette, the family is reunited for Henry's funeral. Poor Rose is blaming her unhappy life and her inability to make something of it on her parents. Jamie, meanwhile, has given up trying to make anything of himself and his father enables his pointless existence. It's an unhappy indictment on the values of the baby-boom generation and might have been more accurately titles "Selfish, Selfish, Selfish."

What Are the Highlights?
Strong performances, particularly from Ryan who manages to make a pretty unlikable person likable,

What Are the Lowlights?
It's kind of a bummer, even if there is truth in playwright Mike Bartlett's storytelling (it clocks in at just over two hours). The dark humor misfires because, unlike Bartlett's King Charles III, which poked fun at Britain's royal family, dysfunction in the typical American family strikes us as more tragic.

More information:
Love, Love, Love plays at the Laura Pels Theatre at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre, 111 West 46th St., NYC through Dec. 18. Performances are Tuesday through Saturday at 7:30 pm; Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday at 2 pm. Tickets $99: roundabouttheatre.org; 212-719-1300.

Credits:
Set Design Derek McLane; Costume Design Susan Hilferty; Lighting Design David Lander; Sound Design Karl Harada; Hair and Wig Design Campbell Young Associates; Dialect Coach Stephen Gabis.
FAMILY-FRIENDLY FACTORS:
-- Language
-- God's name taken in vain
Lauren Yarger at 6:43 PM

2
NOV/16
LOVE, LOVE, LOVE
(photo by Joan Marcus)
Three’s a crowd when Kenneth (Richard Armitage), Sandra (Amy Ryan), and Henry (Alex Hurt) end up hanging out in Roundabout production of LOVE, LOVE, LOVE (photo by Joan Marcus)
Laura Pels Theatre
Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre
111 West 46th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday - Sunday through November 30, $99
212-719-1300
www.roundabouttheatre.org

Mike Bartlett follows a pair of baby boomers through three generations in the blisteringly funny black comedy Love, Love, Love. The three-act play begins on June 25, 1967, as Kenneth (Richard Armitage) is hanging out in his brother’s flat, wearing an open robe and waiting for the Beatles to appear on television. His stuffy brother, the deadly serious Henry (Alex Hurt), wants him out of the apartment because his potential new girlfriend, Sandra (Amy Ryan), is coming over for dinner for the first time. While Ken, who is nineteen, has embraced the radical sixties, his older brother is a sour, old-fashioned drag. “Nothing like this has ever happened before,” Ken says, referring to people around the world tuning in at the same time to watch the Fab Four. “The laws are constantly being overthrown, the boundaries of what’s possible, the music’s exploding, the walls collapsing. That’s what’s going on. That’s what’s changing. We travel, do what we want, wear what we like. Enjoy it. Experiment. We’re breaking free.” Henry responds, “Well, you can break free right now and bugger off. She’ll be here in a minute.” Sandra, also nineteen, arrives like a burst of grooviness, looking like a cross between Judy Carne and Goldie Hawn from Laugh-In and ready for anything, which excites Ken but confuses Henry.

(photo by Joan Marcus)
Dysfunction is always on the menu when Ken (Richard Armitage), Sandra (Amy Ryan), Jamie (Ben Rosenfield), and Rose (Zoe Kazan) get together (photo by Joan Marcus)
The second act moves ahead to a well-kept living/dining room in Reading, where Ken and Sandra live with their two teenage children, Rose (Zoe Kazan), who is turning sixteen at midnight, and the slightly younger Jamie (Ben Rosenfield), who is blasting the Stone Roses as the curtain rises. Ken and Sandra have settled into their suburban, upper-middle-class lives, a far cry from the dreams they had in the sixties. “We’re boring,” Sandra says. “We are boring, that’s true,” Ken agrees. Both parents have careers, and they selfishly don’t give much time or thought to their kids, particularly Rose, who has just returned from playing the violin at a school concert and is upset that she did not see her mother in the audience. After Ken and Sandra divulge some damaging secrets to each other, the family sits down to eat Rose’s birthday cake, but everything is ruined when Sandra makes a surprise announcement, telling the kids that it’s “the only way we can be free.” The finale jumps to 2011, with “Sexy Chick” by David Guetta featuring Akon playing on an iPad in a spacious living room in a fine country house. The family has gathered together for a funeral, but Rose has come primarily to ask something important of her parents. Meanwhile, Jamie just wants to play games on his iPhone and go sunbathing. As always, Ken and Sandra don’t really understand what Rose needs; Sandra is too busy smoking and drinking — there’s a whole lot of smoking and drinking throughout the play — and Ken is enjoying his retirement. “I just can’t concentrate anymore,” he says. “No need to. I love it. Freedom! At last!” But once again, it is not the freedom he envisioned when he first met Sandra forty-four years earlier.

(photo by Joan Marcus)
Ken (Richard Armitage) and Sandra (Amy Ryan) reflect on their life and family in Mike Bartlett’s sizzling three-act play (photo by Joan Marcus)
Tony-winning director Michael Mayer (Spring Awakening, Hedwig and the Angry Inch) revels in Bartlett’s (King Charles III, Cock) razor-sharp wit, injecting a nearly breathless energy throughout the two-hour show as the dialogue bounces back-and-forth among the characters like a superfast game of pinball. Derek McLane’s (Anything Goes, 33 Variations) sets and Susan Hilferty’s (Wicked, Into the Woods) costumes are spot-on, clearly announcing the changing times. Queens native and Oscar- and two-time Tony nominee Ryan (Gone Baby Gone, Uncle Vanya) is wickedly funny as the unpredictable, self-absorbed Sandra, while Armitage (The Crucible, the Hobbit trilogy), the only actual British actor in the cast, is a steady anchor as the unwavering Ken; together they make a formidable stage duo as their characters evolve and devolve. “Nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be,” John Lennon sings in the Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love,” the refrain of which gives the play its title. There might not be a whole lotta love in this dysfunctional family, but there is a whole lot to love in this wonderful Roundabout production.

Let’s talk about dialogue and Love, Love, Love

Nov 3, 2016 | Writing
Let’s talk about dialogue and Love, Love, Love

People always go on about how important inspiration is in writing. But it’s worth remembering this strange calling’s not all head-in-the-air dreaming. There’s also the important question of technique.

A couple of weeks ago I was in New York and while I was there went to see Love, Love, Love, a play by the British writer Mike Bartlett currently running at the off-Broadway Laura Pels Theatre. It’s a tragicomedy about a British couple’s lives across three and a bit decades, and how the selfishness of the Sixties generation has ruined the futures of their children. Put that way it sounds glum but trust me — it isn’t. I haven’t laughed so much in a theatre in ages though it’s also a work that, in post-Brexit Britain, seems more acutely observed than ever.

Here’s Richard Armitage, Kenneth, the father in the play, talking about the production.





Bartlett is a master of dialogue and, since I seem to be hovering between the roles of novelist and dramatist these days, I’m desperate to learn more about how that works in performance. So I bought the script and was lucky enough to have Richard explain to me how the script conventions work after I sat spellbound through a Saturday matinee.

What struck me most to begin with about Bartlett’s dialogue is how natural it sounds. This is a very compact production. A cast of five and just three sets. The dialogue is basically discussion between family members, some of it argument, some the kind of pointed banalities we all utter at home. Bartlett hits the tone of this exactly. People speak over one another. They look as if they’re about to say something but then hold back. The parents, Kenneth and Sandra, are hilariously horrendous and, like all parents I guess, pretend to listen to their offspring but don’t.

All of this relies on some formidable acting. It’s a huge credit to the cast — all American apart from Richard, not that you’d notice — that they speed their way through this very fast and wordy play as if this were all real life.

Drama and writing share something in common; at their best they’re invisible. Acting is successful when you don’t notice the theatricality. Writing, at least my kind of writing, is designed to fade into the background until the reader is engrossed in nothing but the three great pillars of storytelling: the world in which the tale is set, the people who populate that world, and the events that take them on their journey. Painting’s much the same too I guess. A few specialist areas aside, no one looks at a painting to see the paint.

An important element in Bartlett’s achievement with Love, Love, Love lies in the dialogue. Not just the words he chooses but how he wants them delivered. So let’s get technical here. At the beginning the script you’ll see these directions.


(/) means the next speech begins at that point.

(-) means the next line interrupts.

(…) at the end of a speech means it trails off. On its own it indicates a pressure, expectation or desire to speak.

A line with no full stop indicates that the next speech follows on immediately.

A speech with no written dialogue indicates a character deliberately remaining silent.

Two of these conventions — the ellipsis and the dash — you’ll find used in exactly the same way in novels. For example.


Bakker said, ‘I really wish…’

Vos waited. ‘You really wish what?’

Or…


Bakker said, ‘I really wish—‘

’No you don’t,’ Vos cut in. ‘We don’t have time.’

If you’re writing a novel now just remember — dash means interruption, ellipsis someone trailing off into silence.

The rest of these directions are new to me and really only apply to visual drama. Let’s take them one by one (this is my made-up dialogue, by the way, no one else’s).


SON: If it’s OK I’d really like to go and play football /with Donny tonight.

DAD: Have you done your homework?

The effect here: Dad’s making his point about homework by interrupting his son as he speaks. You could also use it to indicate someone who simply isn’t listening to what the first actor is saying.

The second direction — no full stop so that the next speech follows on immediately — can have the same effect, or make the second speaker sound abrupt, perhaps rude or impatient. The third, a character deliberately staying silent, is, I guess, a variation on Pinter who used write in the script ‘Pause’ or ‘Silence’ depending on the length of the pause he wanted.

Oh and you’ll also find this in the script…


Kenneth…

This is someone wanting to say something, being on the verge of uttering the words, but staying silent. The kind of thing we do from time to time.

In Love, Love, Love these techniques are used sparingly but to devastating effect. All the more so because you simply don’t notice. Dialogue here isn’t speech it’s talking. After a while you feel you’re not watching drama at all. You’re eavesdropping on the embarrassing conversations of a dysfunctional family cruising along just above the sharp rocks of disaster.

It’s a masterful work and a difficult one to perform I imagine, not that you’d guess that from sitting in the audience. I can’t begin to calculate how much skill, effort and sweat goes into mastering all this aural choreography. Traditionally we think as stage dialogue as call and response: one character says something, another says something back. This is all that and much more.

I’m not surprised people keep going back to work out what they missed first time round. If I was still in New York I’d be forking out for another ticket myself. It’s a master class in writing and acting. But don’t take my word for it. Just read the glowing reviews.