Naima Khan reviews Caryl Churchill's new helter-skelter collection of sketches, Love and Information.
Caryl Churchill's Love and Information feels like it could be the emotional equivalent of a skin sensitivity test. Director James MacDonald and a cast of 16 (including the perfect Laura Elphinstone, Rhashan Stone and Linda Basset) present us with almost sixty scenarios split into 7 sections that guide us through the many confused and hopeful connections between emotion and knowledge. Their order isn't that important and they are all noticeably brief but as scenes of comedy and conflict fly by at break-neck speed, the most interesting thing about this whole production is the strength of the reactions it produces from us.
The audience swings from raucous laughter to pin drop silence and at one point an audience member cries out in shock. This is during a confession that sees Rhashan Stone deliberate over whether to tell Sarah Woodward something that will likely hurt her. It's part of a series that looks at the information we're not comfortable processing or delivering and it follows a section about extracting information and precedes one on interpreting information. The show, having set its foundation with these three parts then takes on even more ambiguous themes as it looks at memory, understanding, the feelings that knowledge incites, and the “knowledge” that we can't confirm but cling to nonetheless. What's more, the whole show is punctuated by scenes titled 'depression' as if to remind us that whatever our comprehension, these times of sadness and confusion are unavoidable.
Given that this structure is so effective, it's interesting that Churchill states in the text that the sections needn't be performed in this particular order. Regardless, Love and Information in its current state at Royal Court Theatre is clever but uncomplicated, effective and lingering but ephemeral. I laugh at one character voraciously reading into the red flowers his date has given him and recoil in disgust at the casual exchange of tragic information in a bar; and I get the feeling this is exactly what the creators of this production want, to see which of our buttons they have pushed via this helter-skelter sketch show, this intense overload of information and emotion.
And while it looks like a complicated puzzle of words and characters, it's surprisingly simple to work out. Churchill writes clearly and with scalpel-point precision about things like irrational numbers, home movies, language, science and religion. She presents us with segments of the world we already know and lets us get a grip on what they mean to us. How do you feel about this? she asks before presenting us with the next flashcard to interpret.
There's a quote from Marcel Proust's novel, In Search of Lost Time, that is sometimes bandied about when we talk about the spheres of emotion, memory and knowledge: “We feel in one world, we think and name in another. Between the two we can set up a system of references, but we cannot fill in the gap.” I can't decide whether Love and Information is an illumination of this point, or a challenge to it.
Love and Information runs at Royal Court Theatre until 13th October
Image by Stephen Cummiskey
More on Spoonfed
Review: Hedda Gabler at The Old Vic
London Loves - The very best events in September
Shhh...don't tell them it's theatre! An interview with Mark Thomas
.jpg)
Add an event
Review: Byzantium
20 years after Interview with a Vampire, director Neil Jordan cooks up the theme on a ...