The Swell review a gasp-inducing love-triangle mystery

Orange Tree theatre, London
The intricately tangled lives of three women, and their explosive secret, are revealed in this complicated picture of queer love across the decades

The wonder of Isley Lynn’s gorgeous play about the love between three women is in its connections. In a time-hopping narrative spanning 28 years, we meet Bel, Annie and Flo at two different points during their changing intimate relationship, with different actors playing the older and younger versions of each character. The past and present bleed together fluidly and beautifully as The Swell expands into a complicated drawing of modern queer love across the decades.

In the earlier story Bel and Annie are engaged after a whirlwind romance but when Annie’s childhood friend Flo – a volcano of fun, trouble and life – comes to visit, the ease of their new bond is uprooted. In the later thread, Flo and Bel live in an isolated home, away from everything and everyone else. But how did they get there? From the start we’re eager to know, but Lynn keeps the mystery of these adjoining stories devilishly held back, until suddenly the secrets of The Swell explode.

At the Orange Tree theatre, London, until 7 July

Continue reading...

from The Guardian https://ift.tt/s3Bv1em

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Two years after Buffalo mass shooting, an art exhibit focuses on the victims

A few months after 14 May 2022, a curator sought out three local artists. The resulting exhibition, Before and After Again, is thought to be the first of its kind Two years ago, a white supremacist drove 200 miles to Buffalo, New York, and opened fire in a grocery store in the city’s predominantly Black East Side neighborhood, killing 10 people and injuring three. Though the Tops Friendly Markets where the racist mass shooting took place has been remodeled, and most of the country has forgotten about the violence that occurred on 14 May 2022, Buffalo’s East Side is forever changed. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/mqu1LFv
Read more

£1 Thursdays review – nightclubbing, sex talk and big decisions

Finborough theatre, London A mix of sweet observations about female friendship and cheeky brazenness about sex, Kat Rose-Martin’s play finds two young women at a crossroads in their lives In the cold air outside a sticky nightclub in Bradford, 17-year-olds Stacey and Jen are at a crossroads. In one direction lies the world they know: the family stress, the looming exams, the pumping pop beats at the club where they’ll reliably pull boys from school. In the other direction lies an uncertain path, and questions of who they are apart from one another, whether they could be the first in their families to go to university, and how to afford it if they do. Constantly on their minds, while they’re drunkenly dancing the nights away, is where they’ll end up, and what to do if they are the ones left behind. Thoughtful if not revelatory, £1 Thursdays covers an uneasy period of big decisions in these characters’ lives, as the gap between them widens. Monique Ashe-Palmer (Six) is ebullient as St
Read more