How Love Is Spelt
Bush Theatre, London

Rhona Foulis

Former Royal Court young writer Chloë Moss delivers her musings on love and relationships with wit and warmth. Her gift is for dialogue and dialect, the script showing off her sensitive use of idiom, with some cracking lines (Joe's ultimate words of wisdom: 'Don't be sexist in front of birds; they hate it.'). But in powerful juxtaposition to the gentle humour, grates aching tragedy for loves lost.

In the appropriately intimate Bush theatre, we meet Peta, a young Liverpudlian woman, living on her own in a South London flat. Although Peta is the only constant character in the play, appearing in every scene, she is also the most impenetrable. Her enigma fuels the narrative thrust of the play, the audience suspended in ignorance and intrigue - who is Peta? Why is she in London? And who is the man in the photograph? The intrigue is important, not just to sustain dramatic interest, but to reflect Peta's own quest of self-exploration.

Each scene introduces a different character, strangers with whom Peta develops brief relationships, but we learn more about them than we do our protagonist. In fact, in each scene, Peta almost appears to be a different character, as Moss demonstrates the role-playing involved in relationships and self-discovery: our identities are shaped and positioned by the company in which we find ourselves. Interestingly, these interactions take place in drunken twilight hours, in liminal states of consciousness.

It is in this strangeness, and in strange company, that characters feel safe to share their deepest emotional experiences. Joe, Peta's regrettable one-night stand, begins to talk of his estranged daughter; Stephen, a potential date, reveals an obsession with his ex; Chantelle, a potential friend, candidly shares her experience of abortion; and mother-figure Marion, the neighbour, laments the rift in her relationship with her daughter. Moss suggests that relationships break down when communication breaks down: Stephen said 'I love you' too late and Marion's only contact with her daughter is silent phone calls. The socio-sexual 'etiquette' of relationships creates defensive distance and dishonesty between people, so that 'love' is spelt a self-protective 'l-u-v'.

The acting is sharp and the writing unpretentiously incisive, with strong characterisations. Beneath the humour, endearing individuals reveal their hearts and their vulnerability, the final scene at last introducing the source of Peta's own weakness. Frustratingly, an incomplete ending confuses our perception of her motivations and desires, but the overall sense is that, compulsively, humans need emotional connections with one another; that love - of a mother, daughter or partner - forms our family. But you can't force an emotional connection with a stranger; nor can you push a lover away - for better or worse.

Till 23 October 2004