Review: THE LIMIT, Royal Opera House

A play about the limits of language ought to easily translate into a ballet. Words naturally count for less and speech is no longer the primary means of communicating emotions. But does Sam Steiner’s indie darling Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons make the leap into dance?

The truth is that the play itself isn’t actually very good. The recent revival, helmed by Josie Rourke, received unanimously lukewarm reviews with the play itself seemingly having aged since it was written and performed at the National Student Drama festival in 2015. You can see why with its premise clearly inspired by a time when Twitter/X held more social capital than it does now.

After a “Quietude” bill is passed, everyone is only permitted to speak 140 words per day. Will this strain or strength the here unnamed couple’s fraying relationship? The result is more a cross between couples therapy and a philosophical thought experiment than it is a bustling piece of drama. They adapt to survive inventing codes, abbreviations, and new words to express their love, the limits of language are not necessarily the limits of their world. But it soon turns sour.

A heavy portion of The Limit, penned by Steiner, sees Royal Ballet principals Francesca Hayward and Alexander Campbell bicker like glum teenagers before cradling and canoodling each other by way of apology.

Movement, designed by Principal Character Artist of The Royal Ballet Kristen McNally, is interestingly never a substitute for the language but rather something that deepens Hayward and Campbell’s feather-like intimacy.

They mirror each other muscle for muscle, learning and growing together as a couple, silkily paralleling each other’s movement, and then fraying as their relationship hits the rocks, stunted by their inability to communicate. Despite how mesmerising they are they cannot escape the questionable writing. Campbell’s character is so grating, a brattish artist who strugglers to mask his sexual insecurity and wails about Orwellian censorship.

Isobel Waller-Bridge’s live score is austere but effective doing most of the emotional heavy lifting. Moody lonesome cello strings accentuate the ruptures in their relationship. Ascending piano arpeggios echo their tender optimism. There are strong echoes of Philip Glass, not a bad thing given the psychological intimacy of the piece, but it risks being too easily forgettable.

As with the original play it’s annoyingly unclear what the titular limit really stands for. A metaphor for the human condition? Love? Social media? Censorship? I’m not sure Steiner knows himself. The central conceit is just a background gimmick for run-of-the-mill romance, meet-cute, arguments, reconciliation and all. Because of that it is hard for this adaption to shine Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons through any new prisms. It feels like it exists because it can, not because it needs to.  

The Limit runs at the Royal Opera House until 28 October

Photo Credit: Alastair Muir

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