Lovesong (Oberon Modern Plays)

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Frantic Assembly today announced the full cast for their touring production of Abi Morgan's new play LOVESONG. Renowned actress Siân Phillips will be joined by Sam Cox, who will play her husband, and Leanne Rowe and Edward Bennett, who will play the same couple as their younger selves. Though widely performed in the south of England over the last decade, we’re delighted to bring this beautiful and haunting drama to the North East. In January 2020, Morgan said that she was recovering from breast cancer. [15] She had chemotherapy and a mastectomy. [16] Directed by Frantic Assembly's artistic directors Scott Graham and Steven Hoggett, the production will tour the UK, beginning on 30 September 2011 at the Drum Theatre, Plymouth, with a three week London run at the Lyric Hammersmith from 11 January 2012 (Plymouth press night 3 October; London press night 12 January). That is the story of our beginning. And this is the story of…the end. Lovesong intertwines a couple in their 20s with the same man and woman a lifetime later. Their past and present selves collide in this haunting and beautiful tale of togetherness. All relationships have their ups and downs; the optimism of youth becomes the wisdom of experience. Love is a leap of faith.

Directed by Frantic Assembly’s artistic directors Scott Graham and Steven Hoggett, the production will tour the UK, beginning on 30 September 2011 at the Drum Theatre, Plymouth, with a three week London run at the Lyric Hammersmith from 11 January 2012 (Plymouth press night 3 October; London press night 12 January). In addition to previously announced tour dates, new dates have been added at the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow in February 2012. Love Song is a piece of theatre that is about growing old and falling in love. About the endurance of relationships and the decaying of the human body. It’s a refreshing, more distilled Frantic Assembly production, and one that will be sure to strike an emotional cord within each and every one of its audience members. If Love Song has anything to teach a younger audience, it is to enjoy life to its fullest, to accept love when it happens, and to understand that relationships are about being in a constant flux, even if you’re nearing ‘the end’. Nothing is a given, and everything is to play for. A caring and weepy night of theatre. a b Lewis, Helen (15 October 2015). "Abi Morgan on Suffragette: "These were voiceless women. We gave them a voice" ". New Statesman. Archived from the original on 17 February 2017 . Retrieved 16 February 2017. Bafta Film Awards 2012: Nominations". BBC News. 27 March 2012. Archived from the original on 18 January 2012 . Retrieved 17 January 2012. But the writing is sometimes vague or twee where it needs to be vivid. The desire to speak generously of universal experiences robs the play of a dense and satisfying specificity. Of the characters only William - played with great conviction and fluency by Edward Bennett - feels truly magnetic.

The result is a slow-burning meditation on time and transience. We switch repeatedly between past and present, as when William twirls the mature Maggie around the living room and the elderly Billy embraces youthful Margaret. This interplay is lovingly handled.

In 2009 the Drum Theatre had major success with a new ‘horror’ comedy, Grand Guignol by Carl Grose as well as producing a new experimental work, Under the Influence, with Ontroerend Goed for production in Plymouth and Ghent, before touring internationally. The Drum again collaborated with Ontroerend Goed in 2010 on Teenage Riot as well as co-producing Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice with ATC and DC Moore’s The Empire with the Royal Court. The Drum has recently collaborated with Told by an Idiot on And The Horse You Rode In On; with Paines Plough on Love, Love, Love by Mike Bartlett and with ATC on The Golden Dragon. Most recently it produced Chekhov in Hell by Dan Rebellato with runs in Plymouth and at the Soho Theatre, London. Abigail Louise Morgan was born in Cardiff, Wales, in 1968. [1] [2] She is the daughter of actress Pat England and theatre director Gareth Morgan, who was director of the Gulbenkian Theatre in Newcastle upon Tyne (now the Northern Stage). Her parents divorced when she was a teenager and her childhood was spent moving around the country while her mother acted in repertory theatre; she told The Scotsman in 2010 that she had attended seven separate schools during her childhood. [3] Her sister is the fundraiser at London's Unicorn Theatre. [4]

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The high-concept premise is that the same couple is portrayed by Sam Cox and Sian Phillips over a few days late in life, and in their 20s and 30s by the younger actors. Each pair of actors almost always interacts only with each other, but all four are frequently on stage at the same time: the end of one scene overlaps with the next, and Morgan skillfully sets up plot points and themes in one frame that are supplemented or advanced by information provided in the other. Older Billy opens the fridge in his spacious middle-American kitchen, and out pops Margaret in a ’60s outfit, gleefully exploring the home they’re just moving into. Going through boxes of stuff from the attic, Maggie wonders why they ever needed those silly Chinese lanterns — and the lanterns then appear in a climactic scene in the earlier plot. LOVESONG sees acclaimed theatre company Frantic Assembly join forces with celebrated writer Abi Morgan for a new play about lifelong love. Lovesong intertwines a couple in their 20s with the same man and woman a lifetime later. Their past and present selves collide in this haunting and beautiful tale of togetherness. Sam Cox's recent stage work includes Anne Boleyn, All's Well That Ends Well (both Shakespeare's Globe), Inherit the Wind (Old Vic), Arcadia (West End), God in Ruins (RSC/Soho), Macbeth and King John (both RSC). His film and TV work includes Doctor Who (BBC TV), Prime Suspect (Granada) and Hippy Hippy Shake.

White Girl, part of White (2008) – with Hettie Macdonald, won the TV Spielfilm Award at the Cologne Conference Leanne Rowe and Edward Bennett play the young couple, while Sian Phillips and Sam Cox play their older incarnations. Directed by Frantic Assembly’s artistic directors Scott Graham and Steven Hoggett, Lovesong continues at the Lyric until 28 January. Lovesong sees acclaimed theatre company Frantic Assembly join forces with celebrated writer Abi Morgan for a new play about lifelong love.

SIÂN PHILLIPS is one of Britain’s most respected actors. Her recent stage work includes the role of Juliet in Juliet and her Romeo (Bristol Old Vic), Les Liaisons Dangereuses (Broadway) and Calendar Girls (West End/tour). Her screen work includes her BAFTA-winning role in I, Claudius (BBC TV), as well as such seminal works as Goodbye Mr Chips, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Dune. She has also performed live with musician Rufus Wainwright at the Old Vic. A playful, heart-warmingly funny and tragic drama, LOVESONG speaks to all ages with its exploration of ageing, falling in love, and the fragility of life. Morgan is stingy with her facts. At the beginning of their marriage, Maggie and Billy emigrate to an unnamed part of America, as if the playwright wants to separate them from family and friends. The times are only lightly suggested when, in what must be the ’70s, Billy objects to Maggie taking a job in the local library … While Morgan struggles to avoid sentimentality, the production, with its musical underscoring and evocative images, is less restrained … Apart from the occasional clumsy piece of choreography, Frantic Assembly and Morgan have created a highly emotional, tender piece, in which the intensity is remarkably sustained over 90 minutes. It feels as if one is holding one’s breath from the first line to the last. Ageing, memory and the passage of time are powerful themes that affect us all. No wonder it’s a case of tissues at the ready.” Lovesong by Abi Morgan is a textbook weepie which beats with such profound truth that you’re held rapt. SAM COX’S recent stage work includes Anne Boleyn, All’s Well That Ends Well (both Shakespeare’s Globe), Inherit the Wind (Old Vic), Arcadia (West End), God in Ruins (RSC/Soho), Macbeth and King John (both RSC). His film and TV work includes Doctor Who (BBC TV), Prime Suspect (Granada) and Hippy Hippy Shake.

Morgan lives in the north London neighbourhood of Stroud Green in Haringey, [13] with her husband, actor Jacob Krichefski, and their two children. They married in June 2021. [14] Krichefski has multiple sclerosis and developed anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis in 2018 after participating in a clinical trial; after six months in a medically-induced coma he had Capgras delusion and could not recognise Morgan. She wrote a memoir, This Is Not a Pity Memoir, describing these experiences. [14] Telling the story of a couple, Love Song is split between a young William/Margaret and the older Billy/Maggie, depicting the highs and lows of a relationship. Morgan’s text weaves between the honeymoon period of early relationship bliss to the older, refined relationship of a couple who have been together some forty years. The stories twist between each other so at times an older Billy directs dialogue at a younger Margaret, and vice versa. Coupled with Graham and Hoggett’s signature physical movement, the relationship between the couple is physically played with, moving between straight dialogue and movement showing the topography of this couple’s relationship beautifully. Time is fluid as their past and present selves collide in this emotional drama. Love is a leap of faith, and the optimism of youth becomes the wisdom of experience.It’s an incredibly well-cast production. The actors are well-matched in their respective incarnations of the couple. The play is directed by Frantic Assembly’s Scott Graham and Steven Hoggett, and the physical elements, the use of choreography, is superb throughout; the use of movement allows these two versions of the same couple to express themselves. Sian Phillips and Sam Cox in particular show their versatility as performers, undertaking a series of energetic moves that belie their maturity. The use of dance is well judged and works with the text, never overstaying its welcome or distracting from the overall work.