Love Down The Line – New Perspectives

Creators: Sophia Hatfield and Jack McNamara

Director: Jack McNamara

Valentine’s Day will be different this year, and so why not make it even more different by getting someone to deliver a short play to you (or your beloved) down the phone. It’s a personal service and it might just make your day.

Lasting only five minutes, either Sophia Hatfield or Oliie Smith will call you and then perform one of the four plays available. You might hear Hatfield tell you that she’s was just about to leave her husband for you, but when she got home to give him the bad news she found a trail of rose-petals leading from the front door to the bedroom. What follows is very funny, if not a little touching too. It’ll be hard not to laugh and Hatfield’s performance is full of relish and life.

Not quite as funny is Smith’s Love-A-Gram service where he delivers love messages from one lover to another. However, he seems to have lost your message, and the machine he’s using doesn’t appear to be working properly. He does the best as he can, and it’s fun to hear a selection of these verbal love letters, even if one is destined to a cat. There’s a hint that the play could get darker, but New Perspectives wisely focus on the comedy in their phone dramas.

As each play begins and ends with the noise of a telephone ringing or hanging up, there is a sense that they are recorded, but in fact the actors are performing them live, and so when they ask you how you’re doing, it may be best to reply. The fact that they are live means that each performance will be slightly different – personal if you like – and as the actors are working throughout this Valentine’s weekend, a mini-marathon for them.

Love Down The Line may lack the substance of their other shows such as PlacePrints or their WhatsApp thriller Stay Safe, but New Perspectives still packs a lot into five minutes, and the plays could provide some mirth for this chilly weekend.

Runs here until 14 February 2021