Love letters straight from your heart

One thing the unfringed reminded me of, is what a conservative audience member I am really. Sit me down in the dark and tell me a story and I'm happiest. I'm not bored with that. Maybe if I went to the theatre more often then I would be but I don't think so ( it's the same way I watch films and I haven't gotten bored of that yet).

Love Letters Straight To Your Heart was the kind of show that it would have been probably more fun to be 'in love' at, it was still fun though.

I say 'show', but this was 'participatory theatre' so perhaps a more accurate word might be 'event', or even 'party'.



It was an early party, (4:00pm, I think) so only the true alcoholics accepted the offer of champagne, and then we all sat opposite each other along a long white table festooned with flowers and party poppers and listened to music and dedications and drank toasts (nice champagne BTW), and played and listened to personal sermons/monologues on the topic of love and its' importance.

It was lovely, it raised emotions I think, in everyone. Our host and hostess acted and played for us. They were sympathetic, they were vulnerable, they were idealistic, and even exultant while all the while exuding the quiet and reassuring calm that all good hosts do. Then we all danced together and it was over.

It was nice to drink champagne and share, with a room full of strangers, the experience of listening to the love songs of Leanord Cohen, Jaques Brel, Marc Almond, the Smiths, Bowie and Kate Bush.

The nature of this kind of 'participatory theatre' is that a lot of what the audience 'get out of it' is what they 'put in to it' and it just might be that, as a small and conservative daytime audience, we took part too grudgingly to get the experience on full effect, (at least one miserable git didn't even bother sending in a dedication before the show) but I had did have a wonderful time.

Between the snatches of performance and really great music, there was indeed a lot of love in the room. There wasn't a whole lot else, true, but as the music and performance consistently pointed out:

When you have love -what else do you need?

Love letters Straight From Your Heart:
An Uninvited Guests production hosted by Richard Dufty and Jessica Hoffmann.
unfringed awards