love and information review, The Royal Court

love and information is flash fiction for the stage, a flip book of fifty scenes that build into a flood of... love and information. It is a journey into the psyche: a look at the meaning and recording of truth, and the confusions and contusions that colour memory. We have the family whose entire archive is built around home videos; the child whose sister is his mother; the man with no recall who can still play piano; and the woman receiving messages from traffic lights.

Box trot

Caryl Churchill's gift as a playwright is that she dramatises what is unsaid. Each story highlights a moment of human frailty, even if that frailty is simply a fear of being honest. There is much laughter, but it's the piquant moments that stay in the mind. In one thirty second scene a young girl watches an elderly woman methodically pack her dead husband's belongings and remarks, "He must have meant everything to you?" The woman pauses. "Maybe. We'll see."

This is love and information for the wi-fi generation. Even the set changes at lightning speeds. Miriam Buether's extraordinary white box design is reset for every scene, producing gyms, waiting rooms, a sauna, a bird's eye view of a couple in bed, a garden, a toilet, and a park scene which involves one actor speaking while upside down. This smorgasbord of humanity and human experience is the evidence that information is what mitigates the force of love, even at conception. It is touched on in a scene between lovers: "What sex evolved to do is get information from two sets of genes so you get offspring that's not identical to you... so sex essentially is information... Information and also love." 

In conclusion: An exciting, energising, electric production. James MacDonald draws the best out of an exceptional ensemble of sixteen including Linda Bassett, Laura Elphinstone, Amit Shah, Amanda Drew, Rhashan Stone and Susan Engel.

References
Royal Court, buy tickets
Michael Billington review in The Guardian