Review: Heartwarming, Hilarious, Harrowing and Heartbreaking But Ultimately Honest, I WANT TO KNOW WHAT LOVE IS Will Resonate Regardless Of Your Experience With Love

Wednesday 19th May 2021, 7:30pm Eternity Playhouse Darlinghurst

I WANT TO KNOW WHAT LOVE IS shares the personal stories gathered from over 800 anonymous submissions in a powerful piece of verbatim theatre. Exploring the depth and breadth of what love means to real people, this work is honest and engaging as it reminds the audience how the experience of love can be both universal and also unique and incredibly diverse.

Created by The Good Room's Daniel Evans, Amy Ingram, Caroline Dunphy, Kieran Swann and Lauren Clelland with direction from Evans and design by Swann, I WANT TO KNOW WHAT LOVE IS is a brilliant blend of expressions of love, the good, bad and devastating. The design of the work layers in the experiences recounted from the submissions with the detritus of grand gestures of fresh love remaining as a poignant reminder of happier days when the submissions start to focus on the darker side of love, from breakups to the recovery from the emotional trauma of loss of love. Banners emblazoned with a selection of the submissions reinforce the power of the stories and thoughts provided and add to the visual impact as they fill the upper space of the stage while the quartet of performers recite, read and re-enact. Performed by Tom Cossettini, Amy Ingram, Katrina Foster and Emily Tomlins, this work elicits roars laughter at recognition of experiences, gasps and utterances of sympathy along with the odd tear as it hits all too close to home for some. There is a fabulous physicality to the work from Amy Ingram and Tom Cossettini's enthusiastic and hilarious expression of new love, from the awkwardness of youth, drunken hookups grand gestures and accidental encounters, to the amusing engagement with the audience as Emily Tomlins and Cossettini venture beyond the stage in search of supplies and the energetic representation of some of the ways some people try to rebound from failed love as they learn to love themselves again. While much of the work relates to romantic love, I WANT TO KNOW WHAT LOVE IS does acknowledge family love, love tied to friendships and also the occasional love linked to pets. The creativity of the expression and the choice of which submissions have been explicitly expressed elicit an amusing degree of audience engagement and corresponding response as stories are either recognizable, relatable, or totally bizarre and therefore alarmingly amusing. Regardless of your experience with love, I WANT TO KNOW WHAT LOVE IS is for everyone as no matter how heartbreaking some of it can be, the work has a hopefulness that leaves even the most hardened heart touched.

photographer: Stephen Henry

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