Love Steps – Omnibus Theatre

Writer and Director: Anastasia Osei-Kuffour

While sweetly told through dance and spoken word, Love Steps tells a very familiar story of a woman wanting to get married. She has a good career as a writer and a performer, a loving family and faith in God and yet she feels unfulfilled without a husband and children.

In 2024, the narrative of a woman searching for a husband seems strikingly old-fashioned and, of course, it begins with dating apps. Her requirements are idealistic, to say the least; the ‘Future One’ must be lean, have a degree, speak in an English accent and be a Christian as well as good and kind. Her friend tells her that she sounds like a 12-year-old with a such pie in the sky list. And yet our hero is determined not to yield.

And here lies the problem with writer Anastasia Osei-Kuffour’s character. She has no self-awareness that her dreams are too unrealistic and that her goals require compromise rather than blinkered determination. The men she talks to on the apps are all “wastemen”, she surmises and she has a point as they seem only interested in sex rather than marriage, but even Adam, a fellow Ghanaian churchgoer, who seems a decent guy, fails to live up to her high expectations. Never once does she wonder if she should be less committed to her plans. It’s her way or no way.

As the woman, Sharon Rose is amiable and steadfast, delivering her lines with ease. Most of the time we want her to succeed on her odyssey so much does Rose invest in her character. Rose also has superb comic timing, especially when she scrolls through the men on Tinder and you can’t help but wish there was more comedy in this show to reveal a stronger sense of a journey being taken where the woman learns more about herself. At the end, despite a fairly unconvincing coda, she is still the same as she was at the start.

As Adam and as the other characters, Reece Richards is impressive with a whole selection of accents up his sleeve. Whether playing the woman’s father or mother or any of the men she chats to online, Richards, by a turn of the wrist or a sway of the hip, completely embodies these people. Even his face seems to change as he adopts a new persona.

Osei-Kuffour’s poetry is naïve at times with simple rhymes and rhythms but it is always clear. However, what lifts the show out of the ordinary is the choreography by Leroy ‘FX’ Dias Dos Santos. Rose and Richards are hardly still and the movement comprises contemporary dance and Latin Ballroom. These love steps are the perfect accompaniment to the story being told on stage, ably portraying the woman’s journey and the inadequacies of the various men.

But the dance can’t conceal the slenderness of the story and although it’s interesting to see religion at the heart of a current theatrical production, Love Steps struggles to find its feet.

Runs until 20 April 2024