Over two nights in early February, Dennis Kelly’s thought-provoking play, Love and Money, directed by Bella Dixon Smith (D) played to captivated audiences at the Stahl Theatre.
The playwright Dennis Kelly is among the greatest writers of our generation, perhaps best known for his book of the hugely successful musical, Matilda. Kelly’s previous theatre work takes on some of the most controversial issues facing modern society from terrorism to infanticide. If theatre’s role is to challenge and to make people think, Love and Money certainly fills the brief.
Love and Money is a shocking, funny, tragic and thought-provoking play which holds up a cracked mirror to our world of easy credit and compulsive shopping. It tells the story of a couple in love, while also struggling under the intolerable strain of debt, and the shocking solution that is sought in order to make ends meet.
The play presents the audience with a patchwork quilt of scenes which address society’s obsession with money, possessions and promotions, and the viewer experiences what the impact of spiralling debt can have on a relationship.
Revealed tantalizingly piece by piece, the story is brought together in the final scene: a fifteen minute monologue which was brilliantly performed by Radha Mistry (L) in the role of Jess.
The weighty topics were sensitively handled by the able Sixth Form cast, and director Bella Dixon Smith should be congratulated for her inventive direction, particularly of the choric sequence at the end of first act.
N Jones