FOOL FOR LOVE *****
by Sam Shepard.
AT FOUND 111
Shepard is one of the most gifted playwrights inventing dialoogue that is pure naturally witty and perfect with characters that are heartbreakingly human and tender. One can always sympathise, laugh and weep with them.
Like most of his work, it is set in the American West and the play is set in a not too expensive motel room where May is living alone after years of living with Eddie in his trailer
He has been away for months, she is pleased and yet furious to see him. They cling together passionately but she often strikes out at him. He keeps leaving, but she calls him back and he always returns. Both are passionate in their love hate relationship. They have been in this state of violence for fifteen years., clinging together and yet there is as much hatred as love between them. . She accuses him of messing her around, that she has been living like a yoyo for fifteen years.He wants to get a home for them in the country with chickens.
Eddie is being pursued by a rich woman in her Mercedes Benz. She arrives at the hotel and starts firing shots at them from time to time.
She tells him she is expecting a visitor = a man. He is immediately jealous but says he can cope with a man but not with a guy.
When Martin he is sweet, and naïve but hardly a sex symbol.
Watching them all the time and often commenting on the action is the old man played by the wonderful Joe McGann who plays the role of the loveable rogue so beautifully one cannot imagine anyone else in the role.
Eddie is played by TV star Adam Rothenberg and Lydia Wilson ,who must have the best legs in the business, plays May. Both are wildly sexually attractive and their oddball behaviour is totally believable. The acting throughout from all four characters cannot be faulted.
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They are most perfectly directed by Simon Evans who shows his creative, artistic eye in the atmospheric setting by Ben Stones and effective lighting (especially the car headlights) by Elliot Griggs.. The play begins with the strains of Shenandoah playing in the darkness as the first picture is set.
The story about an obsessive but forbidden love that can never be fulfilled is one of the saddest and most beautiful plays to be seen in the West End.
The entrance to the 111 found theatre is not easy access. It is up seventy something stairs and one is exhausted before arriving at the welcoming bar. The theatre is another floor higher.
It is the last play we can ever see at Found 111 as it is up for demolition and to be turned into posh flats. The producer Emily Dobbs who is the brain behind this unusual theatre is looking for another place to open a similar venue.
pyekan 