London
FOOL FOR LOVE
by Sam Shepherd.
4Stars****

Found, 111 Charing Cross Road, LondonWC2H to 17 December, 2016.
Mon-Sat 7.30pm. Mat Wed & Sat 3pm.
Runs 70 mins No interval.

TICKETS: 020 7478 0100.
www.found111.co.uk
Review: William Russell 31 October.

A first rate revival strongly cast
Sam Shepherd’s 1982 play is a tense drama set in a motel in the Mojave Desert where May receives an unexpected visit from an old lover, Eddie. He wants her to come and live with him inWyoming. May is torn between fancying him and knowing there is no future in their relationship and he will disappear again as he has done before.

Anyway, she has a new boyfriend, a rather simple soul called Martin. Nor does the unseen arrival of his last conquest, known only as the Countess, intent on revenge help things. Meanwhile, not there in the flesh but a constant presence, is an Old Man who comments on what the pair get up to.

He is, and the play has been revived many times so this is no spoiler, father to both of them by different wives.

The play has been strongly cast, Lydia Wilson is gloriously sexy and tarty as Lydia, a vision in high heels and a bright red dress, while Adam Rothenberg is rough trade personified as Eddie. A remarkably gaunt and wizened Joe McGann is the Old Man and Luke Neal makes a suitably out of his depth Martin, beaten up by Eddie and befuddled by May.

The cast really could not be bettered. Shepherd’s play, if it is about anything, is about the end of being in love, that moment when one has finally to move on. In theatrical terms it always works and does so again for director Simon Evans, although the physical limitations of the acting space on the top floor of the old St Martin’s School of Art means that designer Ben Stones has had to include an extremely intrusive pillar in the set so that some sightlines are distinctly peculiar. The previous plays in Found’s short life – it is moving elsewhere after this run – were set in motel rooms but somehow that pillar did not play quite so prominent a part.

Eddie: Adam Rothenberg.
May: Lydia Wilson.
Old Man: Joe McGann,
Martin: Luke Neal.

Director: Simon Evans.
Designer: Ben Stones,
Lighting Designer: Eliot Griggs,
Composer & Sound Designer: Edward Lewis.
Costume Supervisor: Joan Hughes.

2016-11-01 10:01:01