In 2006, right after seeing John Kolvenbach’s Love Song in London, Marti Lyons immediately bought the script in the theater’s lobby. Monday, after experiencing Remy Bumppo’s production of Mr. Kolvenbach’s beautifully expansive take on love at Theater Wit, we can understand why. This time around though, as Love Song’s Artistic Director, Lyons used the opportunity to share the playwright’s penetrating vision of one of life’s most essential staples with brand new and, by all appearances, grateful audiences.
Early on you think this story is solely about a strangely eccentric young man named Beane (Terry Bell). We meet him in the total quiet of a stark room furnished with only a bare table, an arm chair and a standing lamp. Since he’s alone, he doesn’t talk and we can only assess him through his actions. He seems oddly benign. And endearingly quirky enough to cause light chuckles to ripple through the theater. There’s nothing that triggers real concern. It’s only after the scene shifts to his sister’s apartment that we understand the degree of Beane’s differentness. Here, in an environment where you’d think he’d be unfettered and expressive, he’s wrapped in a mental cocoon so tightly he looks physically squeezed.
Before he arrives, we get a chance to watch his sister, Joan (Sarah Coakley Price) and her husband Harry (Ryan Hallahan) do married talk in their sleek downtown apartment in the sky. It’s after work and the topic centers on Joan’s “incompetent” intern who she’s just fired. Type A to the hilt, Joan’s rationalizing why she had to get rid of her assistant and let slip that the woman had cried. Challenging her throughout with questions like, “Aren’t interns almost volunteers?” and “You fired her for crying?”, Harry’s queries weren’t meant to sting. They just added balance and reason to her one-sided tirade. He knows his wife’s naturally wired for intensity. You could hear in their exchange that the absence of animus between them was so complete that they were both frequently very funny. Love Song’s often accused of being a rom-com thanks to the vitality, trust and easy harmony that fills their relationship.
Those traits and more come into sharper focus when Beane walks in. Harry’s playfully giving Beane a personality test and Beane’s being far too literal, causing Harry to lose patience and raise his voice. Like a watchfully protective mother, Joan reins her husband in; telling him not to speak sharply to her brother. Beyond the resolve, you could hear history and lessons of memory in her voice. The moment passes, but Beane’s vulnerabilities have become clearer. We associate the kind of adherence he devotes to the strict meaning of language with children. As a young man, we wonder how Beane navigates the world with his sense of nuance so stunted.
When he gets back to his apartment, a stranger is waiting for him in the room’s bleakness. Aggressive, demanding, demeaning, Beane takes her for a thief. She ridicules his lack of possessions. Objects that would signify a lived life. No pictures; nothing suggesting the slightest hint of sentimentality. The room holds only the most necessary of items. Beane’s life is so spartan, he doesn’t even own a plate and eats out of a cup. Despite the polarity of the differences between him and this intruder, Molly (Isa Arciniegas), something between them clicks and Beane becomes transformed. He’s fallen in love and he’s so enraptured by it he changes completely.
As a playwright, Kolvenbach has confessed his preference for writing stories built on both humor and sadness. He also has the courage to push back the veil and reveal aspects of life, like the frightening toll of loneliness, that go unspoken or unacknowledged. Beane’s been so detached, so completely removed from real and sustained connection, he becomes drunk with love when he discovers it. When he and Molly talk about how much they mean to one another, their words radiate naturalness and ring with the outrageous beauty of poetry. Later, during lunch with his sister, he’s nearly delirious with joy and he expresses it with heedless abandon.
It’s only after his sister and brother-in-law come to his apartment to meet his new girlfriend that Beane’s dilemma is exposed. And it’s one that none of them want to recognize. Another kind of love rises to act as both salve and resource. Rooted in experiences and shared history that shape and define family, it acted as a lifeline repaying past debts of gratitude.
Love Song leaves you with a lot to unpack. But the process feels more like unwrapping gifts that you cherish immediately. Under Lyons’ direction, you’re left with a full sense of love’s imperative. Whether it’s romantic love, familial love or love of self, it’s presence is a key to personal fulfillment. And just as importantly, you’re left with the sense that they’re all attainable.
After going through his love metamorphosis, Terry Bell as Beane becomes magnetic. His introduction to what romance could be opened his eyes to possibilities that made him feel courageous enough to try and achieve it in earnest. Both highly capable actors, Hallahan and Coakley Price as Harry and Joan made marriage, when grounded in understanding, respect and deference, look precious in its mundanity. Beane may or may not have understood that he was looking for what they had. Love Song reminds us that to get it, you have must first find it within.
Love Song
Through April 21st, 2024
Remy Bumppo Theatre
Venue: Theater Wit
1229 W. Belmont
Chicago, IL 60657
