Review: Dirty Great Love Story by Katie Bonna and Richard Marsh
17 August, 2012
by: Crystal Bennes
Ah the poetry of Brit-based clichéd sweet (read: drunken) beginnings...
As an American living in the UK for 10 years, I've heard a lot of stories about how couples end up together, and I now consider it something of a truism that British people only really get together after waking up next to a stranger the morning after the night before. But I'd never really appreciated the pure poetry of Brit-based clichéd sweet beginnings courtesy of a one Mr Jack Daniels until Katie Bonna and Richard Marsh got together and wrote a verse play about it.
Dirty Great Love Story is the tale of a boy who meets broken-hearted girl on a night out, wakes up the next morning in bed with girl; then spends the next two years to-ing and fro-ing with girl before living happily ever after. Or maybe not.
What sets this apart from a Disney-film take on relationships is, most obviously, that Katie and Richard are real and on stage and not in an animated movie. On stage and bloody good at acting to boot. It would be worth the price of the ticket alone just to enjoy their performances as all of the supporting characters.
The writing is clever and funny without being clever-clever and obnoxious. Outstanding metaphors and word play abound: "That dress is a rhetorical question - the answer is hell yes." Or, "he sounds like a seal who went to Eton." If you're not into verse, the characters are so beautifully drawn that you won't even notice the poetic structure. But, for me, the poetry is the thing that lifts Dirty Great Love Story from being a good show to being a fracking amazing show. Poetry, particularly when spoken aloud, paints far more visceral pictures than prose.
Poetry demands linguistic economy, and this economy - perversely - means that the depictions of events are so clearly drawn that, despite there being no scenery, no props other than two stools, you imagine the settings almost as vividly as if they were on stage before you.
The love story also works beautifully, in a non-rom-com fashion (even though that's exactly what this play is), because it always subverts the cliché, and accordingly, your expectations. You keep thinking you know exactly where this relationship is going and then it goes somewhere else entirely. One such memorable incident involves a blow job and a festival. How refreshing! How like real life…
It's worth noting that Katie and Richard (their real names, confusingly: the two met at infamous London poetry night, Bang Said the Gun) are sensational performers. Likeable, charming, funny, sweet and utterly convincing as Katie and Richard, but even better as Richard's tosspot of a mate, Westie, and Katie's irritating girlfriend, Cici.
The greatness in this great love story has nothing to do with technical wizardry or even an original plot; it's a simple story of loveable characters beautifully told. Sometimes that's all you need. Indeed, it's the very reason I keep coming back to Edinburgh for the Fringe year after year - the hope of seeing a show just like this.
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