When I told a friend I was going to see Love and Information, she commented how it was modern and unusual. Would there be a dystopian plot twist? Would a character die after spending too much time on his or her phone? I did not know what to expect from the play before arriving, and I did not make complete sense of it until we were a few scenes in.
Caryl Churchill’s Love and Information is made up of seven sections with over fifty scenes and one hundred characters. At its core, this work causes us to think about how new or missing information changes our relationships with others, whether it is a revealed secret or a forgotten memory. First performed in 2012, this play was interpreted on Friday night by seven young women and four young men of the Pegasus 16-25 Young Company, under the direction of Corinne Micallef. Therefore, each actor in the company assumed several roles, and each scene was only a few minutes long.
While the seven sections must be performed in order, the unique part of this vignette-driven play is that the scenes within each section can be performed in any arrangement, and any actor can play any characters throughout the performance.
The format of Love and Information lends itself well to fledgling actors, since they can assume and test out multiple roles, rather than committing to one for ninety minutes. It was good to see teens and young adults with different levels of acting experience all get a roughly equal number of roles and lines, rather than one or two cast members gaining extensive stage time and outshining the others. The actors with perhaps more theatrical experience brought enthusiasm and credibility to their characters and projected their lines well; however, some actors could benefit from instruction in how best to face the audience and enunciate when delivering their lines, as some parts were difficult to hear. In stark contrast, some actors brought a volume level and anger to their roles that felt overdone; this created scenes that lacked credibility. Also, the dialogues were not always seamless, as in an exchange where two of the actors could not see each other: each person seemed to wait an odd amount of time to deliver her subsequent line.
The aspect that I found the most engaging as an audience member was witnessing the quick transitions between the scenes and quietly noting where props and set items from one scene appeared in another. This was sometimes subtle, in the case of flowers or pillows, but other times striking, and I wonder if this was done for comic effect. For example, woodworking tools, nooses, and a doctor's mask made up the items scanned through the grocery store conveyer belt, and appeared in prior and later scenes. I particularly liked the use of rolling tables in multiple forms: as a shopping trolley (which generated some laughter), a DIY construction project, a couch, and a war bunker. In fact, there were several exchanges which resulted in laughter, such as a relatable joke about lack of mobile phone service in the countryside, and after a character interjected 'I can pay attention and do other things at the same time' when his family member was trying to confess something important.
I want to applaud the creative use of lighting, which served as part of the set sometimes. An inventive scene was one where the seven times table was projected stroke-by-stroke, to suggest the actor playing the teacher is writing on a chalkboard. However, there were times when the projections changed too quickly or the text was projected beyond the sheets, and it was difficult to read by all audience members.
Love and Information brought up more questions than answers. The maths class scene called back to an earlier scene where characters multiplied by seven, and I wonder if we were supposed to extract meaning from this, and perhaps to relate it to the poem '49' in the programme. I also wondered if the reappearing props, especially the striking ones, were meant to signify something greater. I am still unsure about how much liberty the director took; this would only become apparent in seeing this play performed by a different company. For example, I would like to know whether one of the triptych scenes was written into the script that way or whether this was the director’s touch. I would appreciate seeing this play again in order to note differing interpretations, and to see how certain directors might treat the themes of love, information, memories, pain, and meaning.
Perhaps the wealth of information in some places and lack of information in others is part of the play’s design. To quote one of the characters: “Is it better to know things or not know things?”