Page 273 - Guildhall Coverage Book 2020-21

with reflective or mirrored surfaces in which characters are seen from different perspectives,
suggesting the introspective nature of some of the pieces

Colour too is a signal of the emotional complexities of the text, and the shade of the rear wall is
draw from Churchill’s interest in red, the depth and facets of which a character muses upon in the
second half of the play. As John Logan’s play on Mark Rothko notes so well, the slashing red
design draws the viewer towards the depth of this short staging space while giving it an energy
and vibrancy that contrasts with the black and white design towards the front, enhancing the
kaleidoscopic feel that Love and Information creates.

Ghai uses this meandering space well to create a flow between scenarios that keep the show
moving rapidly and build its collective effect. With few additional props, many locations are
implied from ordinary domestic homes to vague external spaces and hinterlands that are both
nowhere and anywhere. That all this happens with meaning and confidence on the Guildhall
stage is notable and although the cameras are positioned quite far back initially to capture the
expanse of stage so the audience can observe the active motion around the space, later, close-ups
from left and right are introduced to focus more closely on some of the performances that adds a
useful variety.

Connected together by a sparingly used stretching and clutching movement piece choreographed
for the full Company by Diane Alison-Mitchell, several of the scenarios will make a greater mark
and while not purposefully linked, Churchill gives the Company the freedom to construct the play
quite fluidly, making few determinations about scene order, gender, stage direction or even
demarcating speakers – the text is written like poetry. Here, Ghai’s production uses the 10 actors
to construct a version of the show that draws effective parallels between different sections while
still making them individually distinct and standalone.

The Guildhall’s version has a particular emphasis on memory, focusing on its haunting and
recurring qualities throughout everyday life. In one particularly poignant scene entitled Ex, a
post-break-up couple recall the happier days of their early relationship, using almost elegiac
dialogue in which the shadows of the past momentarily consume the present, reviving a whole
other life between them before it dissolves like smoke and drifts away and the pair return to the
awkward emptiness of the present. The pained wistfulness of memory appears in other piece of
the play as well including The Wife in which a husband fails to recognise the women he’s married,
desperately insisting ‘No, she’s gone. They’ve all gone… /Everyone I know. Everyone who loved
me’. The blurring of past and present, of love present and lost blend together meaningfully in this
version creating a dual concept of love in reality as an illusion, and reality as an illusion in love.

This production also draws connections between Churchill’s interest in science and maths, a
factual interpretation of the world and how we process it which contrasts with the more
philosophical impressions of abstract emotion that the playwright creates elsewhere. A brief
scene called Climate involves an apocalyptic discussion about scientist warnings that creates
alarm between the characters unable to grasp the scale of it. In Lab, two people use cold research
language to describe the gruesome process and ethical implications of experimentation on
battery chickens, while later in Star the speed of light is the topic of a tiny exchange as Churchill