The subject of Patricia Cornelius play is love. Not conventional love but love nevertheless. Not soft but hard, tough, clinging on to for dear life love.
Tanya and Annie are two battlers who fall for each in a big way. Tanya swears that it was love, hot love, at first sight. Annie says that she has never known love before.
Tanya has drug issues and regularly finds herself in jail. Annie is always waiting for her to get out, to renew their bond.
One time whilst Tanya is in jail Annie meets Lorenzo, a street smart guy, who she hooks up with and shares her digs with. Annie rings up Tanya in jail to tell her about him and she ends up putting him on the phone to her. They talk amicably enough, Tanya says she doesn’t mind as he makes her happy. Anyhow as Annie puts it, ‘He’s just filling in till you get home’.
Things are a little different when they do end up meeting up in person. Tanya’s jealousy and possessiveness are palpable and it takes a while to smooth things over. In one of the big scenes in the play the three characters stage a bull/matador fight to defuse the tension which has developed between them.
Lorenzo doesn’t impress Annie when Annie finds out that he has been stealing money from her, taking money from her hiding spots around the flat..
Money is a struggle for all three of them. When things are getting really tight Annie turns to prostitution. Even Tanya thinks of going on the game at one time during the play.
Yes it is a dark world which Cornelius take us into.In her program note she wrote,”I love the stories of those whom the world believes are shit, unworthy, contemptible beings that don’t deserve a good life. To write about those who are forsaken, those we cross the street to avoid meeting, those we find ugly and loud and uncouth, those we call trash and miserable, those who we believe are not worth much, interests me.“
LOVE works because Cornelius shows us Tanya, Annie and Lorenzo ‘without sentimentality or judgement’. They are who they and it is a story of survival, depicting two people whose love for each other gets them through.
Director Rachel Chant has come up with a forceful production which Immerses us in the lives of these three battlers. The dialogue is very fast paced, volleying, rickoshaying between the characters. Chant wins good, convincing performances from the cast of three..
Rose Riley gives us a very fine performance as the vulnerable but strong willed Annie. There’s a scene that shows her character where Lorenzo proposes marriage to her and she says yes. She says ‘I am going to wear white! I don’t care what anyone thinks.’ In some ways she felt like the main character, more a feeling than anything that I can point to.
Anna Samson plays the tougher, more resilient Tanya who falls for Annie and is committed to her happiness more than anything. Tanya is uncouth, raw, and to the point. One knows where one stands with her!
Hoa Xuande plays Lorenzo, a bit of a lost soul, who manages to be a part of Annie and Tanya’s lives for a while.
Ella Buter’s set is sparse but effective. Sian James Holland’s lighting design worked well, including some very good use of character’s shadows against the back wall.
Nate Edmondson continues to impress (he gets a lot of work) with another edgy, atmospheric soundscape.
The show goes 75 minutes straight through and is immersive theatre. There were no false notes, the scenes felt authentic and were well played.
Recommended, Patricia Cornelius’ LOVE is playing the Eternity Playhouse until 9 December, 2018,
https://www.darlinghursttheatre.com/whats-on/love
This at least gives you some picture of this play’s world. It is
This is the scenario : Tanya, Annie and Lorenzo are on the bottom of the heap. They’re young but already the youth has been wrung out of them. They’ve been abused, they’re abusive, and they’re difficult to like let alone to love. But it is love in all its distorted and mutated forms that holds them together. Annie and Tanya make a pact; their love will protect them from an unloving world and it will endure. Even the dreadful and charming Lorenzo will not threaten it. Only doubt in each other’s love can put a wedge between them.