LOVE ME
At the same time, the actors delight in artifice. It’s always clear that they are playing. Everything in this piece is exaggerated and stylized, and a good portion of the humor springs from an acknowledgment of how contrived the scenes are. Still the actors hold us spellbound, dedicating themselves to creating drama in a situation they continually admit is fake.
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This is the formula for great comedy, and Love Me is exactly that. Every scene offers surprises, crackling dialogue, and examples of directorial ingenuity. And best of all, the characters are always tottering on the brink of sheer lunacy. As in a cartoon, the characters make huge emotional swings in a matter of moments, and yet always return to utter seriousness. Love Me puts its actors through their paces, and they remain smoothly in control of their own wickedly difficult material in almost every instance.
It is unfortunate that the vehicle they’ve devised is not commensurate with their skill as performers. Love Me is something of a diluted farce that never quite kicks into gear. It’s the kind of play that needs an engine to drive it, so that by the end of the second act the stage is ready to explode. Cardiff Giant seems to understand this impulse–the play gets more complicated and delightfully frustrating as it progresses, and the climactic scene nearly explodes–but they haven’t taken this impulse far enough. The play suffers from too many digressions, most notably intermittent monologues: each character addresses the audience and confesses, recounts some personal anecdote, or both. All of these monologues are well written and expertly performed, but they do nothing for the play. Instead they stall further the show’s already faltering momentum.
