Writer: Sam Steiner
Director: Josie Rourke
Perhaps the challenge is to write a review of Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons in 140 words? Five words already used in the title leaves a limited time to write the remainder. This is the premise of Sam 
Steiner’s debut play, produced a few years ago, that has now exploded into a global phenomenon.
Direct from a run in the West End, Josie Rourke’s production enjoys a brief ‘tour’ in Manchester and Brighton with TV stars Aidan Turner and Jenna Coleman as the couple, Oliver and Bernadette, who must abide by a new law that allows them to only speak 140 words or less per day.
Steiner’s play is Orwellian in content but not in feel. Their world is ours but with a postmodern Twitter-esque twist – described as the ‘hush law’. Oliver, a musician and protester of sorts is furious at the drastically inhibiting bill the government seem intent on passing through parliament. His new girlfriend and lawyer Bernadette, meanwhile, is less offended at the impending rule change about to be enforced. After all, it seems to be working in Norway!
One can read Steiner’s play in a myriad of different ways. He concentrates less on the explanation and practicalities of the law and more on providing social commentary. We don’t learn why the law is being passed, for example, or what the possible benefits of using fewer words may be. The purpose doesn’t seem to be the focus, but rather the consequence. As a result, it feels a little unsatisfying and more like a ‘what if’ question posed down the pub with a group of friends that expounded into a play. Indeed, it feels bigger than something that can be contained into a ninety-minute play – rather a seed of an idea of a TV drama akin to something like A Handmaid’s Tale.
What Steiner does focus on, in an extremely interesting way, is how the ‘hush law’ would work in reality if brought into legislation. It comes to pass that courtrooms would be exempt, for example, as necessary business needs to be done there. And later to parliament, of course, where word count is thrown out of the window. Protests, on the other hand, much to Oliver’s disgust, are not exempt. Steiner, therefore, begins an exploratory and symbolic examination into the nature of privilege breeding privilege in a British society still dominated by class divides. A comment on cronyism, perhaps, or a more straightforward comment on the effects of Brexit dividing opinion across the country and dividing couples, friends and families.
This is an intimate two-hander that moves swiftly. Lineal structure is shifted throughout as we ‘drop in’ with Oliver and Bernadette at differing chronological times – ‘before’ and ‘after’ when they initially meet and verbally unconstrained to crisis point when they have ‘spent’ all their words for the day and can no longer converse. It is reminiscent of Duncan McMillan’s Lungs in the way time can pass in a fraction of a second with a simple lighting effect and shift in a character’s intention and conviction. Turner and Coleman have to be razor sharp for the duration, which they are, as they whizz us back and forth on a journey of love, relationship, censorship, frustration and ultimately, how much time we have. Josie Rourke allows the play to rattle through at the pace it was intended, the actors not missing a beat. Robert Jones’ symbolic set feels Beckettian as the organised clutter of everyday life vanishes to black box to eerie explosion of objects – expertly aided by Aideen Malone’s lighting design that seems to be able to make the everyday objects seem abstract as the familiar world fragments.
Whilst The Opera House has accommodated impressively to house this intimate two-hander it is not a venue that lends itself to this type of play. The ninety-minute running time whizzes by and although this is a play that inventively deals with enormous topics through the angle of social media freedom/constraints it ultimately feels like a play with so much more to say but ironically not enough time to say it.
Runs until 18th March 2023 and on tour
