Lemons, Lemons,Lemons,Lemons,Lemons

Lemons, Lemons, Lemons, Lemons, Lemons is a play written by Sam Steiner and is a love story set in a dystopian world where two people attempt to build and navigate a new relationship under the threat of a ‘Quietude Bill’, a government ruling, that limits the use of words to 140 a day. Bernadette, a divorce lawyer, and Oliver, a musician activist, first meet at a pet funeral for a cat and before the law was introduced. They soon move in together and it is not long before Bernadette’s irritation with Oliver’s unseen ex-girlfriend and his frustration with her successful career, manifest themselves.

Having never seen or heard of the play before, this is what I was able to glean and it seemed that it would be a straight forward play. Not so..... the play jumps backwards and forwards in time, unravelling their relationship from before and after the introduction of the new law. Totally bemused and confused it took a while, I must admit, for me to get to grips with what was happening on stage.

The set comprised of a sofa bedecked with numerous cushions and throws, a set of drawers and what appeared to be a church pew. The passage of time and the move to different scenarios was achieved by the lowering of lights, which was an excellent way of helping the audience (especially me) to at least realize this was the case, as no way could it have been achieved by either costume or set changes. The words which were left, out of the allocated 140, were delivered by the actors standing at the front of the stage and in turn they were in a spotlight whilst repeating numbers. We hear that Bernadette quickly eats into her quota as she uses 40 words to order a smoothie and the fact that she talks in her sleep, but Oliver is far more conservative as his need to communicate in words is far less. So they have to discover ways to lessen their usage which is implemented in various ways by either drumming, using morse code or by joining words together as in ‘sort of’ becomes ‘sorf’ and ‘ don’t quite get.... becomes ‘dunderstand’. 

Beth Blance as Bernadette and Peter Fielding as Oliver were absolutely outstanding. The chemistry between them was incredible, the different emotions portrayed by both of them were superbly enacted and they certainly brought the clever and witty script to life. There were many excellent small snippets of their life together one being when, just 5 minutes before it becomes law, they have to take turns to say everything they wanted to say to each other. This resulted in an hilarious but somewhat embarrassing exchange of words, especially by Bernadette of Oliver’s, what shall I say, lack of ‘bedroom‘ skills. Another was the scene that took place in the ‘pew’, which doubled up as a car, when emotions certainly ran high and the physical ‘bedroom action’ was very subtlety handled! They were sublime as individual actors but really excelled when connecting with each other. Throughout they constantly moved from the settee, to standing, to sitting on the floor, to moving to the pew and I must just add here, that Beth is 8 months pregnant with twins! Every accolade must go to both Beth and Peter for their equally stunning portrayals but how Beth coped with that level of commitment whilst being pregnant, beggars belief! 

This play was a brave choice by Director Peter Allan but working with such talented actors certainly enhanced and enabled his vision for the production to come to fruition. Many, many congratulations to everyone involved but I must also mention Rob Keeling, who did a sterling job as the lighting technician.

Joyce Handbury

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