According to the programme, Lovemaking to an Inappropriate Soundtrack, written by Jenny Bushell, is “a smorgasbord of love, dating, sex and queerness.” A smorgasbord it certainly is—but one where each course seems to arrive from a completely different restaurant.
Rather than unfolding as a coherent story, the production serves up a succession of seemingly unrelated vignettes, stitched together with varying degrees of success. Menstruation, vomit and a catalogue of awkward, stilted relationships all make appearances, as the play wanders through straight, lesbian and bisexual encounters with determined enthusiasm.
The plots themselves are simple enough, yet I frequently found myself wondering what linked one scene to the next. Judging by the near-constant laughter from the predominantly young audience, however, the play was clearly speaking a language that I wasn’t entirely fluent in. It’s always a slightly disconcerting experience to be surrounded by people roaring with laughter while you’re quietly wondering whether you’ve accidentally missed an entire scene.
Running for just over 80 minutes, the evening somehow managed to feel rather longer. Thankfully, Lewis Eades and Liam Wheeler brought real energy and comic flair to the production. Their performances were consistently engaging, and their impeccable delivery rescued several scenes that might otherwise have drifted by. More than once they caught me laughing out loud.
The production is simply staged with a bedsit set and a large screen providing subtitles, presumably for audience members who are deaf or hard of hearing. Curiously, the projected text occasionally differed from the spoken dialogue, which sometimes gave the audience an extra line or nuance to enjoy. Humorous graphics and a soundtrack of well-known popular songs helped bridge the gaps between scenes and provided some of the evening’s lighter moments.
There’s no doubt this production found its audience. The laughter was genuine, frequent and infectious, even if I wasn’t always in on the joke. While I admired the commitment of the six-strong cast and appreciated flashes of genuinely clever comedy, I left the theatre feeling less as though I’d witnessed a satisfying theatrical journey and more as though I’d spent eighty minutes flicking through someone else’s relationship diary with several pages missing.
Review by Peter Johnson
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