Love And Other Acts Of Violence
11 October 2021
Donmar Warehouse
2.0 out of 5.0 stars
I recently saw Love and Other Acts of Violence at the Donmar Warehouse. Being staged at this relatively small theatre, it definitely felt like a somewhat intimate performance.
The play begins with a Jewish physicist and a left-wing activist meeting at a college party, at first they don’t hit it off too well, but over the next few weeks they fall in love and eventually move in together. As their relationship shows quite a few red flags for emotional abuse, I couldn’t really get into this love story. They seemed extremely mismatched and as much as I tried, I just couldn’t see why they were in a relationship in which they constantly disagreed on the most basic of connecting factors.
Society around them falls apart as their relationship turns to violence, at least here we have a good analogy that somewhat works. But just as we reach the crescendo of their deteriorating love, the scenery switches to a very different one.
I don’t want to give too much away, but it gets pretty grim. Dark and emotional plays are usually quite my thing, but in this one it just didn’t quite click. The scenes felt too engineered to make a point, not life-like enough to build a connection to the individual characters. Overall the play was interesting, but just didn’t quite come together for me. All the different ingredients seemed to just float in a goopy mess rather than coming together as a smooth dough. The characters seemed too one-sided and not fleshed out enough, the story so full of red flags that it drowned out all more nuanced colours.