Love, Love, Love
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Cititour.com Review
“They were careless people, they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
While this now-legendary quote by F. Scott Fitzgerald is actually about Tom and Daisy Buchanan (of “The Great Gatsby”), it feels equally appropriate for Kenneth and Sandra, the protagonists of Mike Bartlett’s often hilarious, ultimately troubling comedy “Love, Love, Love,” now at the Roundabout Theatre Company’s Laura Pels Theatre, under the inspired direction of Tony Award winner Michael Mayer.
As portrayed to sheer perfection by British heartthrob Richard Armitage (making his American stage debut) and Oscar and Tony nominee Amy Ryan (sporting a believable British accent), Kenneth and Sandra – whom we follow in three separate acts that take place from the 1967 through 2011—latch onto the free-love, pre me-generation ethos of the swinging sixties as teens and use it as the roadmap for their lives. Ultimately, however, we realize that they never let go of that philosophy less because of idealism and more because of pure selfishness, as they wallow in denial, booze, cigarettes, flirting, sex, and yes, money, no matter the cost to the others around them.
Those who gets destroyed as collateral damage includes Kenneth’s straight-laced older brother Henry (a very good Alex Hurt), who brings a 19-year-old Sandra to his flat hoping to get laid, only to have Kenneth seduce her, and, more importantly, the couple’s two children, Rosie (the astonishing Zoe Kazan), whom we see as an equally unhappy and frustrated 16 year old and 37 year old, and the sweet-natured Jamie (Ben Rosenfield, made to look almost like a spitting image of the young Armitage), who ends up as even more of a “lost boy” than his father.
That their offspring’s adult dysfunction could be caused, in no small part, by the couple’s decision to announce their divorce to the kids, decided in just one minute as part of Rosie’s disastrous 16th birthday party, never seems to bother Kenneth and Sandra. (That scene, which takes up much of Act II, is among the best moments currently on stage anywhere.). In fact, the couple are first-rate egotists and narcissists – and in Bartlett’s opinion (or at least Rosie’s, as we find when Kazan stunningly delivers a blistering speech in Act III), the cause of Great Britain’s downfall.
Yet, it remains a testament to Armitage and Ryan that it’s almost impossible to hate these two people (much like Amanda and Elyot in “Private Lives”), even when we question or despise their actions. In part that may be because Mayer definitely heightens the show’s comic elements; there are definitely sections when the Sandra-Rosie dynamic feels suspiciously like it’s been stolen from the British sitcom “AbFab”.
As superb as the acting is, one has to give special credit to the genius of set designer Derek McLane, who provides three completely different home settings, the spot-on costumes of Susan Hilferty, and the show’s delicious musical soundtrack. The title, by the way, is derived from the Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love,” (which figures into the plot as well), a song Sandra and Kenneth only think they know the meaning of -- and which the rest of us know is a vast oversimplification of life.
By Brian Scott Lipton
Visit the Site
http://www.roundabouttheatre.org/Shows-Events/Love-Love-Love.aspx
Cast
Richard Armitage, Alex Hurt, Zoe Kazan, Ben Rosenfield, Amy Ryan
Open/Close Dates
Opening 9/22/2016
Closing 12/18/2016
Box Office
212-719-1300
Theatre Info
Laura Pels Theatre
111 West 46th Street
New York, NY 10036
Map
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