Fool for Love exposes the dark underbelly of passion

In love, forbidden fruit always seems to taste sweeter. With a taboo tale of infatuation, Sam Shepard’s Fool for Love explores a dark and hopeless relationship as its characters struggle with the impossible task of escaping a past that haunts them.

The play tells the story of Eddie (David MacInnis) and May (Jamie Konchak), former lovers whose deep, shameful secret about the true nature of their relationship prevented their own happily-ever-after ending. Their story is revealed through a conversation in an abandoned motel where Eddie unexpectedly confronts May, leading both down a dark rabbit hole of grief and anger. Far from a straightforward, romantic comedy-style love story, the emotional production sees Eddie and May struggle with societal barriers and their own inner demons as they grapple with their feelings for each other.

Given the difficulty of the issues at hand in the production, some playwrights may be inclined to guide the audience’s interpretation of their characters. But Shepard’s script lets the audience decide how to interpret the play’s messages for themselves, regardless of the incriminating nature of the topics at hand. 

“Some writers are really good at showing the dirt of humanity — how awful we can be to each other — and then some writers are pretty flowery, and they avoid the mud,” says Konchak, who plays May. “But with Sam Shepard, what he does really well is combining both elements into each character. You really do get to see some horrid behaviour from everybody, but then the motivation or drive behind those choices redeems the behaviour.”

“There’s no white hat or black hat — it’s morally ambiguous,” adds MacInnis. “To add to the relevancy in the modern world, our audiences now are more sophisticated in that they can handle moral ambiguity. It’s no longer us versus them.”

The moral struggle in Fool for Love sees Eddie and May meet on a mental battleground. The demons that plague their lives come from within, and as they struggle with their own emotions and with each other, their story becomes universally relatable, despite the extreme circumstances.

“I think that this is what the conflict is about: higher logical decisions versus basic emotional impulses,” MacInnis says. “While people are watching this play, I want them to think, ‘I’ve been here, I know these people, I am these people.’ I want people to feel while they’re watching and think while they’re leaving.”

And as Konchak explains, it’s the play’s examination of the difficulties of love that makes it relevant to audiences, even decades after its premiere.

“There are different kinds of love: there’s lust, infatuation, obsession — all different layers of what love can be. How many ways can you push it? How can love still possibly exist when you go through all of this pain and the love still remains? How is that possible?” Konchak muses. “Love is a really complex notion, and I think you can keep writing about it until the end of time.”

While Fool for Love examines a common topic, Shepard manages to give the subject matter in his play an engaging and unsettling twist. Even though the dark drama presents some difficult moral issues, they’re impossible to turn away from as the production pulls audiences into its world.

“That’s part of Shepard’s genius: intellectually, you’re thinking that you should recoil, but emotionally, you can’t. It’s what drama is all about,” MacInnis says.

“Every time we think we have something figured out, it gets turned on its head in this play — and in life too — as far as love goes.”

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