Whats on Stage
Imagine a world where you can only use 140 words a day. What effect would that have on society, on relationships? How would you ever get to know someone? That’s the premise of Sam Steiner’s play which has enjoyed worldwide success since it launched on the Edinburgh Fringe in 2015.
School children study it, apparently, mulling over the idea that a government might want to impose a Quietude Act – or Hush Law as it is known – and limit its citizens to minimal communication. It’s a thought-provoking idea, but as drama, on stage, it runs out of steam. The richness of this production, directed by Josie Rourke and starring the hugely popular Aidan Turner (of Poldark fame) and Jenna Coleman (from Doctor Who, The Sandman and Victoria) can’t quite disguise moments of imaginative rather than verbal poverty. Even at a brisk 85-minutes it all feels a bit thin.
It pivots not only on the imagined law but on the love affair between Oliver and Bernadette, whom we follow from their first meeting in a pet cemetery through the vicissitudes of their life both before the Hush Law and after. The scenes are arranged non-chronologically, so the picture of their relationship emerges gradually, shifting and changing all the time.
Even before their communications are limited by an Orwellian state there are tensions in their match of opposites. He’s a laid-back freelance musician – “though recently it’s just been jingles for adverts mainly” – whose family live in a castle; she is a lawyer who has worked her way up from working class beginnings. He believes the Hush Law must be opposed by protest because it will silence those with least power, while the rich find a way around it. She closes her eyes, hopes for the best, believes it will never be voted in.
Turner is brilliant at communicating the narcissism and vulnerability that lie beneath Oliver’s casual authority, the way he talks over Bernadette without even meaning to; Coleman waits, watchful like a bird, diminished even as she longs to have her say. When they lose the ability to talk at length, announcing the number of words they have left before they speak, their fights seem more bitter – over the way she squanders words at work, over his contempt for her job.
On Robert Jones’ clever set, with objects illuminated in the walls (lighting by Aideen Malone), they spar and dance and declare their love and anger. Annie-Lunnette Deakin-Foster’s supple choreography and Rourke’s direction move them fluently through the short scenes; one moment they are sitting in a crouch, the next seamlessly sprawled on the floor. They circle each other, weighing their next utterance. By the close, they simply sit, beginning to realise that compression can sometimes mean truth.
The dialogue is never less than smart and clever ideas lurk. With talk of repeal of a law that becomes unpopular, there’s the obvious echoes of Brexit; as people who have lived through the privations of lockdown, it’s hard not to find resonance in the theme of how we communicate and what we say when we have limited means to do so.
There are moments of luminescence – as when Bernadette sums up the pros and cons of having a baby in 40 words, or Oliver mourns the constrictions of vocabulary over a lifetime – but the stranglehold imposed on the writing, which means lots of short, sentences, and abbreviated thoughts, suppresses feeling and range.
For all Turner and Coleman’s energy, you never quite get to know this couple, so the play feels less profound and less moving than it should.
Time Out
‘Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons’ review
Jenna Coleman and Aidan Turner are a couple struggling in a language-rationed world in this inventive but bleak romcom
Not to be all ‘I saw the Pistols in ‘76’, but I did see Sam Steiner’s debut play ‘Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons’ in its original incarnation as a lo-fi word-of-mouth hit at the 2015 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
I remember it as a reasonably whimsical affair: political, yes, but at its heart a fizzing, inventive romcom set in a Britain in which language has become strictly limited to 140 words per person, per day. It’s a limit that protagonist couple Oliver and Bernadette adhere to with a deadly seriousness that Steiner smartly refuses to get into: it’s as if physics has been changed by decree.
But Josie Rourke’s surprise West End revival, starring telly faves Jenna Coleman and Aidan Turner is a disarmingly bleak affair, or certainly in comparison to eight years ago.
You can probably blame Brexit for some of this. The late Cameron years from which ‘Lemons’ emerged weren’t exactly idyllic, but I don’t think ‘the hush law’ – as staunch opponent of the word limitation act Oliver calls it – felt based on anything specific back in 2015. Now, however, it totally feels like a comment on the loss of freedoms that came with Brexit, not to mention the general rise of global authoritarianism in recent years. The fracture between Oliver’s activism and Bernadette’s apolitical uncertainty feels deeper and more pointed, a parable about creeping fascism.
Which is absolutely reasonable and in many ways shows that the play is ageing well (it’s also been somewhat rewritten by Steiner). But the feeling that the language limit is now a slightly heavy-handed allegory maybe robs ‘Lemons’ x 5 of some of its old lightness of touch.
This dourness is underscored by Coleman and Turner’s frosty, unforgiving takes on Bernadette and Oliver.
They have a good meet cute: randomly, at a cat’s funeral. But their relationship rarely feels functional outside these scenes, despite the plot spanning a full seven years.
Coleman is cold and brittle as lawyer Bernadette, who is insecure and irritated that her musician boyfriend takes a dim view of her profession and seeks out the company of his more political friends, including his ex. And Olivier – while admirably socially engaged – is just a bit of a self-absorbed prick. We never really get to enjoy their relationship at any point: it’s always tense. Not that the play is one note, and it’s fascinating how the pair change after the hush law is enforced: before they probably yakked away too much, endlessly dancing around their actual feelings; after they’re stressed and miserable, unhappy with their brutally limited means of expressing themselves.
I’m probably making it sound like a chore, and it’s not. Steiner’s writing is smart and pithy, and Coleman and Turner give very raw, very human performances that feel deeply personal. If they’re miscast in any way it’s that they’re digging a bit too deep for what maybe worked better as a fizzy, cerebral play of ideas in which the actors played second fiddle to the writing.
There’s a lovely set design from Robert Jones, a big wall laden with the ephemera of daily living, junk and clutter that stands in contrast to Bernadette and Oliver’s increasingly pared-down lives. It’s beautifully lit by Aideen Malone, especially the move to washed-out lighting in the post-hush act sections.
‘Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons’ is still good after its richly deserved West End glow-up, it’s just that it’s gone a little sour.