Theatre Review: ABBEDAM’s “Loveplay”
Student production tackles love, sex, and all the rest
SuppliedWhat: Loveplay
Who: ABBEDAM Productions
When: November 1-4, 2018
Where: Second Playing Space, Timms Centre for the Arts
An ephemeral moment is all it takes to change the world.
Thus proclaims Moira Buffini’s Loveplay, which ABBEDAM Productions (a student-run production company at the U of A) presented November 1-4, 2018. Fearless director Evelyn Scheibli led a formidable cast to wonderful success.
In 90 minutes, Loveplay presents 10 vignettes about love, sex, and everything surrounding them on a single piece of land in England. This land sees plenty of action over the course of 2000 years — from Saxon sex workers tricking Roman soldiers to cheating husbands and “saddo” dating services.
Sharing only their setting and thematic concerns, each scene was a refreshing moment in time. Every scene built upon the last, promising to reveal something new about the human condition — examining love, wonder, joy, ecstasy, nerves, and visceral rage.
To cast this challenging play, director Evelyn Scheibli recruited 17 actors of varying degrees of experience, to great success. Nearly all the performers had two contrasting roles, showcasing different performance qualities. Thus, the audience saw the actors explore the range of their creative abilities.
Standout performances are hard to name, as Buffini did not write arcs into her characters. We catch a glimpse of their lives, moments of incredible intimacy, before they’re ultimately whisked away.
That said, I was struck by Ahmed Assaf as Buttermere and Layten Byhette as De Vere in the Age of Empire (the Victorian era). De Vere, an artist, wants to paint his old friend Buttermere in the likeness of Lucifer, the angel-turned-devil, before he fell. Buttermere, a vicar, is scandalized. But soon enough, he opens up to De Vere about his gloomy, alienating life. Overcoming their character’s obstacles, both Assef and Byhette effectively conveyed the complexity of their situations and ultimately repaired their fractured relationship in a passionate battle of values.
Technically, Loveplay was striking. In drama, there is a large variety of storytelling techniques, and the tech is often overlooked to focus heavily on acting text. Scheibli, however, had no hesitation about using lighting (Beyatta Hackborn) and sound (designed by Evelyn Rollans) to effectively tell the story.
A galaxy sprawled forth over the stage — a moon, a giant sun, sprinkles of stars, and space dust — which returned between every set transition, reminding us of the universality of the action.
Highlighting the drama was a beautiful score of familiar songs, chopped up, disquieting the characters and audience as the play goes on — a rape and murder occurs early in the play and comes back to haunt various characters throughout, which the music foreshadows.
With only a few acting slip–ups here and there, the action seldom came to a halt. The scenes occasionally became drab, but that could be more accredited to a script issue than an acting one. However, on the note of scripts: one scene had Buffini’s intent changed, which defeated the purpose of one of the story arcs of cheating husbands. This was a questionable choice, but didn’t diminish the overall effect of the stories.
Despite the challenges of a large cast, an atypical story arc, and tough staging, ABBEDAM’S Loveplay was clearly handled with care and delivered a uniquely human experience.
