JOE PENHALL
All this “wanderlust”. All this “My life is so dull and regimented”.
Live-in lovers Neal and Rachel are overworked doctors. They rarely see each other, and their relationship suffers from it. Enter Neal’s old good-for-nothing friend, Richie, for a surprise visit, straight from South America – or somewhere. He needs a place to stay and Neal is too weak to say no.
Richie is a decadent, self-deceived and deceiving drifter, who has spent the best part of his twenties and thirties bumming around the world in search of instant kicks and pretending to be a brooding Graham Greene creation, but coming across as something a lot closer to Dr. Gonzo.
Out of touch with the world and his partner, overworked and mortgaged Neil is the utter antithesis of Richie, who, as might be expected, shakes up the grim reality of the couple’s desolate togetherness.
Love and Understanding is about that generation torn between the comfort of the boring safety of the organized existence and a mortgage versus the dream of an insecure life with an ever-changing career, interesting people and exciting travels (and some drugs, a hell of a lot of booze and complete disorientation).
On a theatrical level, Richie turns up like a deus ex machina, unwinding a situation, knotted to the point that none of the actual active participants could undo it. So, how real is he really, or how much is he a sort of spiritsworn up by the couple’s impossibility to relate to each other?
Not enough love and understanding
We could use some love to ease these troubled times
Not enough love and understanding
Why, oh why?
With
Nickel Bösenberg, Larisa Faber, Owen Sharpe
Director Anne Simon
Design Marie-Luce Theis
Assistant director Tom Dockal
Trainee and Prompts Olga Alajääskö
Set construction Ateliers des Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg
Coordinators make-up, wardrobe & props Michelle Bevilacqua & Anatoli Papadopoulou
Wardrobe & props laire Biersohn
Make-up Joël Seiller
Production Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg