Lovesong (Oberon Modern Plays)

Product Information

Her plays Splendour and Tiny Dynamite were commissioned by Paines Plough and are published by Oberon Books. However, as Margaret/Maggie prepares to take her own life and end her suffering, Billy is at her side.

Her The Night is Darkest Before the Dawn was written and performed as part of The Great Game: Afghanistan cycle of plays which recently toured to the Pentagon.Throughout the performance I thought of Maggie and William as a unit, and so when Maggie died it felt as though William was left at a loose end and appeared vulnerable without Maggie; the sorrowful atmosphere could’ve easily accounted for the death of both characters.

This subtle factor bared significance, as it showed Maggie’s hearing deteriorating as she became older.Cox is equally pitch perfect as the old man grown irascible, haunted by a sense of loss except for one thing, the most important thing, his boundless love for Maggie. If this sounds tricksy (add in powerful video backdrops and an intensely moving underscore), it isn’t – all is perfectly pitched and done with beautifully judged finesse. This image linked to the earlier conversation between Maggie and Bill, when she told him that she would want him to relive memories and revisit places they’d been together when she was gone.

As they enter the final week of her life, the house becomes full with memories of their marriage and their desperation to conceive a child.Moving from England was their first leap of faith, setting up Billy's dentistry business another, but a lifetime later it is the sick, frail Maggie who is doing the jumping, and she needs Billy to help her prepare. The story, which explores the endurance of relationships and decaying of the human body is brought to life, focuses on the entwining lives of William and Margaret (later becoming Bill and Maggie) as they progress through time together, and the audience witness their past and present selves collide in memories. An elderly man dances with the memory of his young wife; a young man makes love to the woman his new wife will eventually become. Frantic Assembly is the operating name of Frantic Theatre Company Ltd, a Registered Charity, no 1113716.

This moment allowed for the audience to confirm that the older and younger couple were in fact the same people; costume choice for both women and both men were identical. Both men wore brown button down shirts, whilst in one of the scenes Maggie is seen wearing a scarf of the same blue colour as the dress Margaret was wearing in the previous scene. One aspect of the direction which I found particularly thoughtful was the way that scenes which clearly showed Maggie and Margaret as being the same character, as an obvious choice would’ve been to have them speak some of the same lines or do some of the same actions- however this never happened.There is a deal of clever staging: characters disappearing into wardrobes, coming out of the fridge or emerging like the Kraken from some subterranean time world beneath the bed. In Scott Graham and Steven Hoggett's beautifully choreographed production, today and yesterday are in a constant pas de deux with each other. It's not often that you hear mass sobbing in the theatre, but it's all sniffles during the latter stages of this new Frantic Assembly show.