Book: Mark Childers
Music and Lyrics: Seth Bisen-Hersh
Director: Cecilie Fray
Relationships are a challenge, particularly when the person you love doesn’t love you, a scenario which shapes the lives of the four-strong cast of Seth Bisen-Hersh and Mark Childers’ new musical Love Quirks. Performed at The Other Palace Studio directed by Cecilie Fray, this feels more like a collection of songs still seeking a more robust plot and stronger characterisation, but with a little rearrangement, it has the potential to offer shrewd insights into dating, love, marriage and expectations in your 20s, and why these ideals are so unattainable in 2025.
Flatmates Lili and Steph are frustrated when Ryan announces he’s moving in with his latest partner after only two months and has sublet his room to American chef Chris, who has recently broken up with his fiancée. Only Chris and Steph have history that Lili remembers, and when Ryan returns to the house share, things only get more complicated as they all reveal a liking for people they can’t have.
Love Quirks: A New Musical is about the pain of unrequited love, with Bisen-Hersh and Childers creating a series of complicated intra-flat scenarios as the friends explain their particular crush, largely stymied by not sharing the same sexual preference as the object of their affection. This, in Act One, is mixed in with some tales of dating disasters, especially in the title song performed just before the interval, but with such a long time spent on more generic lovesick numbers that never really expand on the characters, actually opening the show with this song about the peccadillos of their collective lovers could be a quirky and more dynamic way into whatever this story want to be.
Act Two is equally loosely plotted, a collection of experiences which each character undergoes that deliver them to an outcome instead of fleshed out individuals navigating these events in a more structured way as part of bigger lives that are not just about love. For example, there is a good Sondheim-esque song for Ryan, Um, Yeah, who goes on a bland date in which the audience only hears his side of the conversation across a night that becomes increasingly painful. A comic opportunity absolutely, but Bisen-Hersh and Childers don’t use it to say something more significant about Ryan, his romantic expectations or make broader comments on the downsides of online dating. Ultimately, Ryan rekindles a relationship with his ex, but Love Quirks doesn’t show the audience how or why he got there – was it a sudden realisation that he loved his ex after all, or just a diminishing pool of viable candidates? Did Ryan acknowledge true love or settle for the closest approximation?
The writers need to do the same for all of the other characters to rescue them from their one-dimensionality. The songs are good, but the story weakens them, hesitating between being funny or deeply earnest about love, while the ‘quirks’ part of the title could be better realised through the book. Performers Ayesha Patel as Lili, Clodagh Greene as Steph, Tom Newland as Chris and Lewis Bear Brown as Ryan are all excellent singers and in spite of a tendency to belt out everything – the curse of contemporary musical theatre – they bring their roles to life. Yet we learn too little about any of them beyond their lovelorn state and not why it matters. The material needs to work much harder to support them.
Runs until 12 October 2025
