Review: Love & Money

Love & Money by Dennis Kelly
Old Fitzroy Theatre
11th September 2007

As published in The Daily Telegraph.

Mortgages, cars, iPods, pools and plasma televisions. It’s a Christmas list for your average household. Slowly the entire country is finding itself up to its neck in debt: credit cards maxed out and mortgage lenders making those courtesy phone calls.

Nevertheless, David (Bryce Youngman) really wants that new Audi. He knows he and his wife Jess (Angela Hattersley) can’t afford it, but it just handles the road so well.

When he comes home to find her lying on the floor after suiciding, the first thing that pops into his head is the sudden disappearance of their debt.

The timing of this production of Dennis Kelly’s playLove And Money couldn’t be more fitting. It goes to the very core of what can happen when a community or an individual is beset by debt and the desperation, greed and jealousy that sprays from it.

Even a gravestone can become a source of envy, as Jess’s parents (Christopher Stollery and Diana McLean) watch a Greek-style mausoleum dwarf their daughter’s humble cross.

Love And Money, with this excellent cast, is vibrant and darkly humorous in the best tradition of English writing.

Despite this, the production is set back by direction and stage design that stops it from reaching its full potential.

With a set that gets in the way of the acting, this play manages to miss its own mark in teasing out the ramifications of the dire situation so many of us are in.