Love & Understanding

Published Monday 9 February 2004 at 11:55 by Gerald Berkowitz

Joe Penhall’s play, first seen at the Bush in 1997, is an addition to the sizeable body of fringe plays in which a couple’s relationship is destroyed by a visit from an old friend. It is written with some wit and verbal felicity but adds little to the genre and has characterising weaknesses that Wojciech Duczmal’s new production only emphasises.

The overworked and under-relating couple played by Lucy Barker and Luke Roberts find their lives disrupted when the almost unbelievably self-indulgent, supercilious and insensitive old friend played by Sam Gordon moves in on them. For no apparent reason beyond force of habit, he uses a born manipulator’s instinct for their greatest vulnerabilities to play them off each other, lying, insinuating and betraying confidences until their relationship breaks down.

The scenes of destructive manipulation are frequently as disturbing as author and cast could wish but the play is kept from being as effective as others of the genre by an extremity of characterisation that makes the villain too motivelessly malignant and his victims too naive and malleable to be believable. Put simply, it is hard to believe that they would fall for his tricks as easily as they do.

Acting and direction only emphasise these extremes. Gordon plays the visitor with such overt oiliness that he is practically twirling his moustachios in panto villainny, while Barker and Roberts anchor their characters in too much intelligence and common sense for their sudden flashes of gullibility to ring true.