Show ended
One Mike Bartlett state of the nation play, Albion, has just concluded its run at the Almeida, and now here’s another he made earlier, in the wake of the 2008 financial crash. It takes its title from the Beatles’ song and it follows two baby boomers, Kenneth and Sandra, from 1967 through the subsequent 40 years. Their lives fail to turn out as they expected, and they inflict untold damage on the next generation. The play was originally produced by Paines Plough, and it will be interesting to see how well it’s aged. But undoubtedly the generational inequalities that were highlighted by the financial crash remain with us and director Rachel O’Riordan is sharp enough to make it seem bang up to date.
It’s 1967. The Beatles are performing All You Need Is Love on global TV for the very first time. Kenneth and Sandra meet. Love, Love, Love, charts one couple’s journey forty years from the era of free love to the beginning of the 21st Century. Smoking, drinking, affectionate and paranoid, Kenneth and Sandra build their life and family together in a time of increasing national prosperity, when the future is always better than the past. Now they’re retired and their children grown, but why hasn’t it all worked out the way they thought? What happens when the children you think you’ve done everything for, believe you haven’t done enough? A family go to war over their personal politics in Mike Bartlett’s funny and scathing look at the opposing values of two very different generations. Age Recommendation: 14+