Review: Love and Information (Remy Bumppo Theatre)

  
  
Love and Information 

Written by Caryl Churchill
Greenhouse Theater, 2257 N. Lincoln (map)
thru Nov 1  |  tix: $42-$52   |  more info
  
Check for half-price tickets  
  

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Very earnest but deeply flawed

Remy Bumppo Theatre Company presents

Love and Information

Review by Clint May 

It may be that the term “mixed bag” was never a more appropriate descriptor than for Remy Bumppo’s production of Love and Information. Playwright Caryl Churchill provides the “bag” of dialog and the director is allowed to style the 50+ scenelets with more than the usual discretion. A scene involving two people discussing an earthquake/tsunami on the news may be staged with two men at a bar under one director, or between a man and a woman in a taxi as is the case here. I’ve read of versions running longer and shorter than the 90-100 minutes here. However it’s constructed, the totality is inevitably a tone piece with echoes of the plays that made Churchill famous. Calling it “experimental” or “innovative” doesn’t seem appropriate anymore. That it exchanges depth for breadth is not the game changer it used to be.

That it does so is part of meta-form of the play itself, structured akin to a series of short Tweet-esque interactions that flitter by at varying lengths of mere seconds to several minutes. Unlike a similarly styled Hellcab, there is no central character or anchoring location except the abstract notions of love and how it colors the very broad concept of information. That information can take many forms, but here it’s primarily memories and secrets. From a scientist studying memory formation to a man with Capgras delusion, classified information within the FBI to a friendship-destroying revelation to mathematical models, Churchill presents a dizzying spectrum of interactions with over 100 characters in a long stream of conscious meditation. Taken as a whole, this sort of “innovative” theater feels more like watching a show with an editing problem. Perhaps the decades of success Churchill has enjoyed has lead to a later career problem in people afraid of saying ‘pull back’.

Not that there isn’t some interesting stuff happening here. A grandmother telling a grandchild a story about a boy without fear and his unfortunate fate counterpoints with a boy telling a girl of his congenital analgesia—whether it’s the negative emotion or the negative sensation, both boys will meet the same fate, which is death from a lack of the negatives.

In a barrage such as this, however, it’s difficult to suss out such interesting threads. Another common seconds-long repeater involves a person asking to involve someone in an activity only to trail off as they are met with a forlorn, haunted stare. Such points and counterpoints and repeating motifs make Love and Information not unlike a musical composition. Some of the vignettes are gallingly ham-fisted while others offer glimpses of haunting interactions that make you ache to see a play just about that subject.

 

If it seems like I’m writing around this production trying to hone in on a central thesis—you’re correct. Exiting Greenhouse, neither my guest nor I were terribly impressed and rather exhausted, even with the shortish run time. Good theater always leaves me energized no matter the length, and this didn’t. Writing about theater after the fact sometimes has the effect of reverse-engineering a more positive glow as the analysis brings out new insights that a gut reaction may not. One of the words that immediately came to mind regarding Love and Information’s conceit was “precious” (aka ponderously full of itself). I thought of Crave by Sarah Kane and how it attempted a similar deconstruction of human connection but managed to stay with me three years later as an indelible mark that I know this production won’t leave. This wasn’t poetically disruptive enough to see something new in the interplay and not deep enough to touch emotions—but the elements are in the bag.

Part of me is a little weary of new plays that proclaim a desire to “ask new questions”. Having a clear point is not the same as force feeding an answer, but if the playwright wishes to ask questions, they have to find a way to not turn it into a chore for the audience. By the end of Love and Information, it feels as though Churchill is trying to forcibly appropriate our mental processing capacity to cope with the seismic pace shifts of modern life (which, really, aren’t all that new as concerns go).

Remy Bumppo’s cast and director Shawn Douglass are another issue. Everyone is serviceable to the size of the task, but sketching out this many characters quickly is more easily embraced by the veterans, and that’s readily apparent. David Darlow is just stunning in every bit (and used to the best effect), as is Mary Poole and Raymond Fox. Sometimes the cast feels too superficial or are pushing too hard to ‘sell’ the point of these interactions. They certainly seem to be having a good time, and some scenes really do land with a gut punch or illicit a snicker of recognition.

No flaws in the technical work however. The Penrods have designed an ingenious set of towering shelves of white storage file boxes that are a character unto themselves—mimicking beautifully the way our minds store and retrieve information and providing props and scene elements on demand. Sarah Hughey’s lighting design similarly contributes to the scene changes by evoking a sense of space with the bare minimum necessary in the vast stage area. The most ingenious set design I’ve seen since Completeness.

Love and Information is the kind of theater that is difficult to even talk about because it doesn’t want to be. Churchill is on record as unapologetically defying the familiar and advocating decentralization. If we find this frustrating, well that’s just part of the aesthetic. Is this approach more entertaining to the actors or the audience is the ultimate question.

Rating: ★★

Love and Information continues through November 1st at Greenhouse Theater, 2257 N. Lincoln (map), with performances Thursdays-Saturdays at 7:30pm, Sundays 2:30pm.  Tickets are $42-$52, and are available by phone (773-404-7336) or online through Vendini.com (check for half-price tickets at Goldstar.com). More information at RemyBumppo.org.  (Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes without intermission)

Photos by Johnny Knight 

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artists

cast

David Darlow, Linda Gillum, Emjoy Gavino, Andrés Enriquez, Gregory Fenner, Raymond Fox, Jennifer Glasse, Mary Poole, Frank Sawa, Penelope Walker

behind the scenes

Shawn Douglass (director),  Nora Mally (stage manager), Hana Kadoyama (assistant stage manager), Charlie Marie McGrath (assistant director), Megan Geigner (dramaturg), Jacqueline and Richard Penrod (set design), Emily Waecker (costume design), Sarah Hughey (lighting design), Rick Sims (sound design), Linda Sherfick (properties design), Aram Monisoff (voice and dialect coaching), Johnny Knight (photos)

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