The Stage

Love, Question Mark

Published Monday 12 April 2010 at 10:10 by Alistair Smith

Love, Question Mark marks the full-length theatrical writing debut of Robert Gillespie, best known as Dudley Rush from TV sitcom Keep it in the Family.

It is also the opening part of a trilogy of plays and the first show to be staged at the recently opened 80-seat New Diorama Theatre near Warren Street.

The production is simply staged and finely acted on a clean set consisting of two chairs and a red dressing screen, which is rather fortunate because the play itself is a mess - especially in the second half.

Broadly-speaking, it examines the question of whether man is made for monogamy. It does this partly through the story of Michael Smith, an ageing widower who, after decades of marriage, has a breakdown and shacks up with an Argentinian mail-order bride/prostitute called Maria.

This story is interspersed with Michael giving a lecture to the audience about the nature of love, sex and monogamy, referencing the Marquis de Sade, Casanova and James Joyce, before segueing into stories of Persian satraps and swans.

Simply put, though, the structure doesn’t work. Michael is an unlikeable sort - patronising, controlling and desperate —and his constant flitting from one character to the next means it is impossible to develop any empathy, a real problem as Gillespie clearly wants us to see some kind of universality in his plight.

Meanwhile, the to and fro-ing between lecture and back-story means that the play never builds any dramatic momentum. After the interval, it gets even worse, with the piece making unexplained and frankly confusing expeditions into interpretative dance, slapstick and even song, the mood flitting from drama to low comedy and back again.

Both Stuart Sessions as Michael and Clare Cameron as Maria do their best to keep up with the vagaries of the script. But while there’s talent on stage and the seed of a good idea here, both are completely undermined by the play’s format.

And what of the venue? Well, the New Diorama is a useful, flexible space and I’m sure that it will be put to better use in the course of its life.

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