Review: Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons, Wardrobe Theatre

After its success at the 2015 Edinburgh Fringe, Sam Steiner’s Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons seems an obvious choice for the inaugural show of this year’s Directors’ Cuts season from the young directors at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.

Directed by Caroline Lang, Lemons… follows a young couple as they jointly navigate their politics, jealousy, work, ideals, past, commitment and love. The play snatches the overdone study of a relationship’s power dynamics and relocates it within an Orwellian near-future. In this stage-world, a ‘hush law’ has been introduced, limiting everyone to a mere 140 words a day.

Lemons… plays out in non-chronological order, as we observe various snippets of conversation between the pair. The fast-paced play bounces between scenes, with transitions carried out effortlessly, to show how Oliver and Bernadette’s relationship fares under the new law. We witness their moments of articulate chatter pre-law, alongside stiff, calculated speech after, in what is fundamentally an examination of the power of language and communication.

Alex Wilson as Oliver

The script – stuffed full of jokes, epigrams and clever references to earlier moments – reflects Steiner’s fixation with word play. In one beautiful scene, the couple exchange variant ‘I love you’s in different tones, contexts, and used in different ways. Steiner raises the question: is it devalued if it’s already been said to someone else?

Though filled will charming quips, Lemons… hammers in the same message repeatedly, and stretches its ungrounded concept as far as it can possibly reach. Though conceptually interesting, the play seems to self-proclaim its own genius, clever for the sake of being clever.

What the play does well, however, is present a believable relationship that we can identify with. Oliver is an annoying, pseudo-liberal musician, Bernadette a divorce lawyer. Steiner has somehow managed to make the couple simultaneously unlikeable and accessible as we witness them in moments of tenderness, strain and anger. Neither is the villain.

Kate Reid as Bernadette. Pics: Craig Fuller

The lack of verbal freedom forces Oliver (Alex Wilson) and Bernadette (Kate Reid) to work harder to forefront subtleties of facial expression and body language. Reid is especially persuasive, projecting meaning into her physical movement and stressing the play’s message about nuanced communication and reading between the lines.

The actors work well together in a believable dynamic, never letting the Wardrobe Theatre’s stage seem empty. An awkward sex scene is particularly well staged, with the actors facing away from one another, into the audience, a few metres apart.

Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons balances relatability and a witty script with the fear of a dystopian future. Minimal staging projects the dialogue in a play about words and what is left unsaid. You leave the play thinking about language and honesty – and how important it is to get these right.

Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons continues at the Wardrobe Theatre until Saturday, May 5, as part of Bristiol Old Vic Theatre School’s Directors’ Cuts season (May 1-26). For more on the season, see our preview here. You can find listings for the three subsequent shows in our Theatre listings or via the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School website.