Are You Lonesome Tonight? Heart Shaped Box: OFS Studio (From The Oxford Times)

Are You Lonesome Tonight? Heart Shaped Box: OFS Studio

3:41pm Wednesday 14th April 2010 in

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Oxfringe’s double bill of one-act plays, Are You Lonesome Tonight? and Heart Shaped Box, have both seemingly been motivated by tremendously powerful songs, each about lovelorn yearning. Caustic and life affirming in their own way, they’ve inspired many people to do both beautiful and stupid things and it’s the latter both these plays choose to focus on.

Are You Lonesome Tonight? is the story of a middle-aged married couple, who met following Elvis around the US, seeking to put the spark back into their life together by taking in every date of The King’s farewell tour. Initially they feud and then find common ground by reminiscing about their youth. It’s interesting for a time, but the script is baggy, languid and lacking purpose. Ultimately, the play is two people you don’t know raking over past glories. And, like most times when you’re listening to someone tell stories you weren’t a part of, your head drifts off to thinking about what you’re going to have for dinner and away from the narrative.

Heart Shaped Box is in a similar vein, with two university friends meeting after years apart to attend a wedding of friends they made a decade ago. Their reunion is marred by the looming spectre of a friend’s suicide, triggered apparently by the actions of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain. They, too, reminisce, then quarrel and blame each other for the death, shoe-horning Nirvana references in occasionally.

Once again, the accusations and soul searching drag on a bit and the narrative isn’t strong enough to carry the audience with the characters. The play also manages to misinterpret the meaning of one of Cobain’s finest lyrical moments.

Both plays are noble attempts to look at pop music’s effect on everyday relationships, but are let down by flabby scripts and narrative too weak to harness the power of their source material.