Showing @ St. George’s West, until 29th Aug @ 6:00pm
What is innovative theatre and how do we measure it? Does – or should – it excuse theatre that is inaccessible? David Leddy’s work prides itself on being innovative and unconventional. Untitled Love Story explores the concept of meditation-as-theatre and offers the audience the opportunity to participate and reflect, but the end result is somewhat underwhelming.
Venice links four characters that live in four different decades and never actually meet. Throughout the performance, each character reveals their story of love and loss. The chapters are punctuated by moments of meditation, in which the audience are encouraged to close their eyes and recount their own memories. Leddy caters for our eyes using projections, technical effects and geometric staging of the four characters; and our ears by using poetry and, at points, a soundscape of heavy rain. The romantic aesthetic created by intimate lighting and stark red and black colouring is enhanced by the characters’ poetic language; but none of this defines or develops the characters or their stories. Where individually these elements are interesting, as a combination they don’t seem to gel and as a complete piece of theatre, it doesn’t really do what it sets out to achieve.
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