"LOVE" Review
“Performance Live: LOVE” Review
"Love” is a Performance Live production, written by Alexander Zeldin, following the lives of several impoverished households trying to hang on in their communal area of a temporary accommodation block.
In this hour-long drama, we watch two families and several individuals, who have fallen into poverty and homelessness due to the many limitations of the systems in place in our society. The story primarily follows the nuclear family in the aftermath of an eviction and suffering from being rejected by the welfare state due to unfair arbitrary rules, and a family comprised of a mother and her son who have been living at the accommodation block for a year because they refused to admit the elderly mother into a care home that they witnessed alleged horrible events occurring within.
The first family begin with hope in the system that their issues will be cleared up and they will be looked after, since they are new to such potent poverty, and they see themselves as somewhat better to those around them, especially the socially awkward son of the second family. However, as they begin to be ignored and discarded by the system, they start to conflict with the second family, as everyone who is simply trying to get on as best they can and their own held back feelings and standards start to get in the way, the second family, primarily the pregnant mother, begins to realise the sad reality they are all living in and tries to make amends.
There is another story interspersed across the performance, following another woman from Sudan who lives in the accommodation block. This shows her brief hopeful connections with others as well as her own hostile reactions to others as she is also simply trying to get by. This miniature story helps encapsulate the message of the story, showing straightforwardly the lonely and emotional lives of these real people, holding back a flood of emotions as there is no one to talk to, and with arguably the worse situation in life out of all the characters, which the other characters dismiss as they’re focused on their own lives, and yet, despite a brief scene of passive-aggressive hostility, possibly a subconscious lashing out, this woman stays kind and reveals the humanity and eventual dignity of these struggling people.
I think it is also important to note that each character smiles at some point and is in some way kind or understanding, and that no one, besides maybe the young angsty child, is purposefully rude. Everyone is shown clearly to be trying their best to be nice, perfectly exemplified in scenes such as when a Syrian resident arrives and starts putting his things in a shelf while one character gets nervous that he may be stealing of using too much space, he acts in an anxious but still hostile manner and the Syrian responds by apologising calmly and making amends. This is shown again near the end when the old mother asks one of the characters who is in a rush if he could pour her a glass of water, and although he is clearly in need of going somewhere, he is kind to her and quickly helps her out, even having a short chat with her before he cannot wait any longer and rushes off. It was these short moments that humanised these characters and forgave them for their flaws and lack of more outwardly acts of solidarity.
As I have not watched the play on stage and instead have only witnessed the television adaptation, I understand that there would be key differences and so I think it’s important to note that my remarks on certain aspects are not representative of the script or the stage play. That being said, I found the cinematography and framing to be disappointingly lacklustre, especially with all the opportunities the setting provided. I assume the stage play would have had the communal area openly laid out so the audience can see where the people are and are coming from, but the televised production uses a realistic set that, although soaks the audience in the dark grime and the claustrophobic tone, fails to create a coherent set.
My main issue that found certain scenes difficult to follow was the constant breaking of the 180-degree rule and the lack of geographical consistency. The 180-degree rule is a film-making term that works as a guide for the relationship between the spatial position of the camera and the focal point of a scene. The rule dictates that, to keep consistency of where everything is, the camera would remain on one side of an imaginary axis in the set. In plays, this rule is unnecessary because the set and audience are often fixed. This rule allows the audience to know the geography of the set and so if something were to move off-screen, the audience would have an appropriate understanding of where they have gone. “Love” constantly breaks this rule by having shots jump around the room, almost as if they were only decided so they could convey what is happening in their most direct forms. This is furthered as the set has no establishing shot and is seldom shown in it’s entirety, and since the walls and doors are all very similar, with the most distinct objects being closer to the centre of the set, it can become difficult to track who is going to or coming from where, and so at several points the play acts as if you’re supposed to know where a character is going or where they are when the audience has very little film-making and visual language or set-designed indication to go on.
On a similar but lesser note, the cinematography could have also employed the set itself to further themes through framing. On several occasions I noticed how the story was clearly trying to show how isolated a character was feeling and yet the shot was a medium to medium full shot. Such a moment would have been conveyed far better if it was more of a full shot or was farther away to show isolation visually, and a great opportunity was missed to utilise the almost overabundance of doors through the set, as having a shot of the lonely character from a distance and through the frame of a door would have very powerfully shown how disconnected and claustrophobic and isolated and small they felt. Likewise, one of the final shots of the play was supposed to be impactful but the framing was uninspired, as if they were not filming to convey but filming to simply show. In the end, when the old mother is standing out in the rain, it feels like there should have been a shot of her from a directly in front of her but in the distance, or at least one with the setting somewhat straight, which would have conveyed the feeling of importance or cohesion and certainly would have been a memorable shot, but instead the shot was merely a few feet from the actor and merely looking on, as if they simply sought a shot that would do its most basic purpose.
However, the final scene was still able to be conveyed wonderfully through the performance of Anna Calder-Marshall, who was able to realistically portray a person losing their ability while maintaining positivity and emotion, and was able to bring a well-written character to life in a very engaging manner. The acting throughout “Love” was equally phenomenal. Nick Holden, who portrayed the adult son of the old woman, was able to bring the socially awkward but devoted and well-meaning man to life in a sympathetic and heart-breaking performance. Janet Etuk, who played the pregnant mother, was wonderful at showing the internal mechanisms of her character who subtle expressions and movements, being able to jump from one reaction to another with nuance and grace in a realistic way, making her character appear painfully human. Both Like Clarke as the father and Brooke Hart as the daughter in the nuclear family present seemingly simplistic characters but as the story progresses their performances are able to show even the smallest details of how these characters function and see the world which allows the audience to understand every action they take. A minor character that stands out for me is the Syrian played by Ghazwan Safadi who, in only a few short scenes and one long scene, displays a man full of character and life and warmth, as well as purpose, who truly appears happy and kind, and through this performance is able to provide enough heart and love for the craft that sticks in your mind for days after. Finally, Hind Swareldahab, playing the Sudanese woman, creates the most packed character with every minor movement and look and stance and expression conveying in some way the deep internal struggles her character faces; the sadness and fading hope, the isolation and utter loneliness, the desire for connection but also fear for it, the sense of a stranger in a strange land, and the effects of not being able to open up about any of this, all fighting under the surface and coming out as a performance that at first seems subdued but upon a second watching, after the character’s internal struggles are known, are ever present. Every masterful performance, upon the fantastic writing, heightens the story into an emotional slide that leaves the purest sense of a bittersweet ending in the audience’s mind.
The writer and director of “Love”, Alexander Zeldin, has primarily made plays within traditional theatre and so it makes sense that film-making would not be his forte. As I watched through the play again, after researching the writer/director and other aspects of the play, I began to see it as a great first attempt at adapting a play to television, and for someone’s first work in television “Love” proves to be a great start, all things considered. As a writer, I would say Alexander Zeldin created a phenomenal story, and as a filmmaker I would say Alexander Zeldin is still finding their footing but had a strong start, clearly understanding the basics and directing the actors wonderfully but lacking in fully realising the opportunities of cinematography. I highly recommend “Love” to everyone, especially writers, however I caution filmmakers to the possibly mildly irritating film-making. “Love” by Alexander Zeldin is a joy to watch and stays in one’s mind as a fantastic work of art.
