Theatre
I Love You, in Danish (Jeg Elskar Dig)
Oran Mor, Glasgow
Mary Brennan
three stars
IT'S summer-time, folks! Nowt to do with any weather fronts, it’s the seasonal change from having plays with your pie and pint to savouring a clutch of mini-musicals as the Oran Mor lunchtime fare. This line-up actually ends with an opera, Tosca:The Henchman’s Tale but you could easily describe the opening piece as a wee nod in the direction of epic operatic themes, viewed through a nostalgic prism of young love in the 1930’s and 40’s.
The couple in Dave Anderson’s I Love You, in Danish, first meet at the Palais. He (Kevin Lennon) is a working class lad, brought up by a widowed father who believes manliness is measured by how strong and tough you are. She (Miriam Ewell-Sutton) is a working-class girl with a mother who encourages aspiration. You could polarise them as male brawn and female brains, but when they come together in the tango – one of Anderson’s sparky pastiche numbers – it’s love in whatever language you like.
It’s at this point that Anderson’s own creative legacy – his long-standing collaborations with the late David MacLennan, their Wildcat days especially – surfaces on-stage, giving a social/political context to their romance. A backdrop of projected slides locates the period, with images of 30’s poverty giving way to the subsequent grimness of war.
Meanwhile Christine Bovill, the Chanteuse who anchors this totally sung-through narrative, gives dramatic voice to the horrors of fascism even as the letter-duets between Lennon and Ewell-Sutton counterpoint these with hope, tenderness and heartfelt messages of love. Anderson (Jakey, who’s behind the piano and the hints of history possibly repeating itself) allows Victory to come centre-stage as a glorious finale. How much of a happy ending that still is, remains unsung.
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