Love

Love is cutting-edge theatre  a tough, relentless love story about drug addiction and abuse.  Written by Patricia Cornelius fourteen years ago, and performed several times since, it has received numerous awards, including the Wal Cherry Award in 2003.  Here, Cornelius again teams up with long-time collaborator director Susie Dee on this new production.

Love is more than just a token junkie love story.  Three people face the daily grind of getting a hit, insidiously conning those they supposedly love with the aim of avoiding jail and, more importantly, feeding their addiction.  It is a haunting theatrical experience, seething with underbelly themes and insights about the junkie underclass.  Cornelius tackles these issues with sharply crafted, strikingly real lingo, while Dee directs the hyped-up realism, stiflingly manic and claustrophobic, on a small, elevated stage.

This minimalist production relies on the actors to provide shape and meaning through the characters alone.  Dee has cast three exceptionally talented actors who rise to the challenge, depicting belligerent characters, who are unforgivingly harsh and remorseless.  Nineteen-year-old Annie (Carly Sheppard) has a dying hope of escape from her miserable junkie prostitute life.  But she is barely able to hang on to her callous lesbian junkie “lover” Tanya (Tahlee Fereday) even while being used and abused by her low-life “lover” pimp Lorenzo (Benjamin Nichol).

This is vicious, brutal, psychologically uncompromising theatre that spirals down into the badlands of the human psyche whilst flashing a “no exit” sign.

Flora Georgiou

Photographer: Pier Carthew