Amber Creswell - Fool for Love

09 May 2005

There is a fine line between love and hate and Sam Shepard’s Fool for Love traverses this precipice beautifully. Typical of Shepard’s work, Fool for Love is set in a kind of nowhere land on the American Plains. His characters are typically loners and drifters and this four-person ensemble is straight from such a mould.

Under the direction of Gorkem Acaroglu, Fool for Love is a precisely cast piece of theatre. May (Karen Day) is the lonely and abandoned lover of Eddie (Joe McClements), who drifts transiently in and out of her life as he chooses. Their union is as passionate as it is derisive, with their separation generating longing, and their coming together spiked with venom.

Fool for Love is a play about sometimes violent, nearly inarticulate people struggling to deal with and express the breadth of the emotions they are feeling. The convincing Southern American drawl of McClements and Day gives this play an appealing, rhythmic quality which lures you into a sense of quasi-comfort until the dramatic reveal – our lovers are siblings.

Bruce Kerr plays our Old Man – whose part interestingly drifts in and out of action, largely seated in a peripheral rocking chair, the significance of his role holding out on the audience until the play’s final moments.

Peter Heward endearingly joins our troupe as the simple, kind-hearted Martin – would-be suitor of May. Martin’s innocence draws dramatic contrast to the acid tongued diatribe of May and Eddie and his role presents opportunity for our tequila-charged lovers to tell their tale.

This production of Fool for Love is performed in the suitably claustrophobic Old Council Chambers – you feel invisibly voyeuristic, yet are taken to dark and confronting emotional places with our characters.

Fool for Love is sexually charged, beautifully acted and encased by a meticulous set which observes Shepard’s directional nuances and prop particulars. Seated in the audience you are held captive by the play as it unfolds, and at its end will realise you have watched much of it with held breath. Acaroglu has done a wonderful job with this play, and with such a strong cast you can see how a play can take us beyond the four walls in which it is performed.

- Amber Creswell