Love, Love, Love - review

Olivier award-winning playwright Mike Bartlett may have structured his latest play (jointly produced by Paines Plough and Plymouth's Drum Theatre) as an old-fashioned, three-act, two-interval drama but there is nothing stuffy about this acid-sharp story of a couple who wanted to change the world but cannot change themselves. Under Hartley T A Kemp's vivarium-like lighting no nuance of the five actors' brilliantly hyper-real performances is lost. The action begins on 25 June 1967, the day the two turned-on 19-year-old students on their first summer holiday from Oxford meet; she dumps his too-straight brother for him to the sound of the Beatles' "All You Need Is Love". It ends some time in 2011 with the pair dancing to the same track, oblivious, as ever, to the effects of their behaviour on the wrecked lives of their mid-30s daughter and son. In between, the volatile combination of trammelled adults and frustrated teenagers explodes in a firework display of pain and mutual miscomprehension. Dazzling.