Love

On mattresses in squats three young people struggle and scheme to get their next fix – their illusions of love soon proving just part of the game.

Patricia Cornelius’ double award-winning play from 20 years ago returns as part of the Old Fitz’ Late Night program, with her profile of damaged, already cynical victims at the bottom of the heap whose back stories, beyond the grimy present, Cornelius doesn’t even both to flesh out. 

Annie in one way is the most self-sufficient, the others dependent like pimps on her earnings from sex work, but she’s an open sore of neediness. Izzy Williams captures her manic excitability and blousy sexiness, and the yearning declarations of love she makes with Tanya, who fell for Annie on first sight in the prison yard.  Tanya clings to the certainties of her declared love, but Georgia-Paige Theodos delivers a withheld, under-realised character. 

Annie has the luxury of two lovers when the angular and addled Lorenzo (Rhys Johnson) crashes into her bed – and her pockets – but the threesome is soon complicated.

Cornelius’ play has some delicious dark ironies, and ends with some cruel rejections, but her focus on the present obsessive itch of addicts for a fix, and their dubious words of love, is a challenge of empathy for director Megan Sampson and her cast.  Johnson’s Dominic may be the least attractive character, but his mangled manipulations are seductively funny.

All this is played out around a busy mattress on connected rostra, short scenes through time which are well-placed but require more dramatic involvement.   

Martin Portus

Photographer: Patrick Phillips