No less impactful for its understated nature, Thinking Cap Theatre’s current production of playwright Abi Morgan’s Lovesong is a beautifully bittersweet journey through one heterosexual couple’s 40 year marriage. Somewhat more down-to-earth than some of the company’s more experimental ventures, the play features the aforementioned couple as the only onstage characters. But, adding a stirring spark to what would otherwise be a fairly conventional domestic drama, the play intersperses scenes of the couple in their youth with snapshots of them in their old-age.
Within these two temporal spheres, though, events transpired largely linearly, with the exception of the occasional meta-dialogue that seemed to exist outside of time entirely. Together with the fact that two distinct sets of respectively age-appropriate actors played the older and younger versions of the central characters, this minimized any confusion about “when” we were and what was narratively happening.
In the playbill, the younger versions of the characters are referred to as Margaret and William while their older counterparts are identified by nicknames Maggie and Billy, which is the convention I’ll use from here on out as well. Fortunately, there were no weak links to be found in the resulting four-actor ensemble, and each pair of performers got plenty of time to shine.
As William and Margaret, Abbie Fricke and Nathaniel Heustis are each full of energy and charm, and share believable chemistry as a young couple very much in love. Their exuberant performances are critical to getting us audience members to become invested in the story—but its Deborah Kondelik and Peter W. Galman as Billy and Maggie who are given the chance to “bring it home” for a profound emotional payoff. Without giving too much away, the most affecting parts of the play involve the two’s struggles to cope with an impending personal tragedy, the nature of which is slowly revealed in subtle, slice-of-life scenes.
Naturally, the impact of this event for the older couple is immeasurably heightened thanks to our visceral sense of their history, gained from our time with their younger selves.In this way, Lovesong’s unique storytelling structure pays off big time—but the gambit does come with some major trade offs. Because we know from Billy and Maggie’s storyline the broad outlines of what “happens” to William and Margaret, there’s little suspense to be found in their here-and-now. Similarly, the play’s leisurely pace and down-to-earth style work immensely well in Billy and Maggie’s storyline, giving them time to fully reckon with their unenviable circumstances while painting a touching picture of their day-to-day life.
But when it came to William and Margaret’s more pedestrian struggles, the same approach eventually grew somewhat tiresome, contributing to issues with the show’s pace as a whole.
Taking into account a slightly late start time, Lovesong still ran at least ten minutes longer than its promised 90 minutes—and while a sharper production might have tightened the pace somewhat, some of the tedium is probably inherent to the script.
Otherwise, director Nicole Stodard and the rest of the production team do an admirable job with Lovesong, incorporating memorable expressionistic touches into the play’s design and staging that elevate the material and reflect its themes. A set designed by Alyiece Moretto-Watkins is up to the task of representing a variety of rooms in the couple’s long-time room as well as its garden exterior, blending leafy greens with pieces of furniture in an enchanting hodge-podge that clearly paints the play as one emerging from memory.
Bree-anna Obst further enhances this atmosphere with ethereal lighting and projection design, which provides some beautiful moments. As co-sound designer with Stodard, Obst also has a hand in creating an evocative soundscape that mixes thematically appropriate music and natural sounds.
As intimacy and movement director, Nicole Perry also helps provide some magical moments, most notably during a few haunting choreographed sequences in which “older” and “younger” versions of the couple interact, a visual encapsulation of the “dance” between past and present that defines the play.
