What If We Tried Something New? - Thoughts on Romantics Anonymous

For a little while in the last month or so, the world began to look like it did in January and February. An almost distant memory when the world made a lot more sense and there wasn't a 24/7 never ending sense of doom all over the news and the internet.

The main thing that the beginning of the 2020 had was a show that I truly could not have foreseen the effect it would have on me. A show that would cause me to travel a 150 mile round trip twice in a fortnight to see it three times (twice in one day) because I loved it so much.

That show, of course, is Wise Children's magnificent production of Romantics Anonymous.

If at any point this year I have spoken to you about theatre, this show has undoubtedly come up. I'm mad about it in every possible way, and its for a reason that is completely new to me.

When you watch theatre, it's not often that you find yourself staring back at you on stage. But that is what I find in Romantics Anonymous.
The central performances from Marc Antolin and Carly Bawden as Jean-Renee and Angelique stop me in my tracks, because I am these people.
Let me explain.

Romantics Anonymous, based on the 2010 French film Les Emotifs Anonymes, is the first musical from Emma Rice's production company Wise Children. It looks at the life of two socially anxious people: a woman who quietly works as a chocolate maker, hidden away from the world, and a man who is struggling to keep his chocolate factory afloat following the death of his father. 
It's a story where you know the ending from the beginning: you know these people are going to be together by the time we get to the end. It's more a musical about discovering why these people have the imperfections that they have, and how they learn to live with them, and each other.

The first time I watched the show, I was completely enamoured by the way Emma Rice's book, alongside Michael Kooman and Christopher Dimond's music and lyrics created a world that revolved around chocolate, and then every so often you found your heart-strings tugged at so tightly that you can barely breathe. 
This is none more prominent in the number "If She Loved Me", sung by Jean-Renee. He has followed Angelique to the support group Les Emotifs Anonymes (which stays in French, because, as Angelique puts it, who would go to something called 'Emotionals Anonymous'?) because he has realised that he can't live without her.

It's all in Dimon's beautiful lyrics, alongside Marc Antolin's incredibly understated performance. The song is the show's '11 o'clock number' in a sense, but it's sort of not the musical that has one. It's the moment where the stakes are the highest, and he has one last shot to not lose the woman that he loves. 

"I'm not good with words, I'm just not equipped,
perhaps I'm afraid and so I stay tight-lipped,
but I could be something to see, if she loved me."

A song had never made me feel that way before.
Sure, I've had emotional reactions to songs before (the two main examples being Defying Gravity and Being Alive), but there is something about If She Loved Me that gets me in a way nothing has before. The lyrics honestly could have been written about me, especially me at  the beginning of the year. 
It's a feeling that I can't really explain, but it's just one of those moments in musical theatre where you see yourself looking back at you, and it's a lot to take it.
Je suis emotif and all that.

I'd be wrong to not quickly discuss the cast of this show (I could honestly write an essay on Carly Bawden and Marc Antolin and maybe I still will).

Bawden and Antolin have such a connection on stage that is like dynamite. There are no huge numbers that they belt to profess their love, it's all done through the smallest of gestures and the simplest of melodies. 

Sandra Marvin superbly gives life to Angelique's man-eating mother, and Magda (who has worked at the Chocolate Factory since 'the beginning of time'), alongside Me'Sha Bryan as Suzanne and Harry Heppel as Ludo (who's performance is so understated that you can't help but love him.)

But it is Gareth Snook who almost pulls the rug out from underneath everyone in his spectacular performance as Madame Marini, who is so over the top and ridiculous that the audience is in hysterics before he's uttered a word.
The world needs more Madame Marini's

 

So, lets talk about exactly what Wise Children managed to achieve last week. 

Emma Rice, Wise Children's artistic director, managed to pull together the majority of the cast, crew and musicians from the beginning of the year, got them to bubble together for a week, rehearse the show for another week, then tech and dress the full show. 

On top of that, they performed it to a digital audience for 5 nights, and then a socially distanced audience of around 150 on the final day.
Because of them bubbling together as a unit, the show was performed in it's entirety, without the need for social distancing.

Just let the logistics of that all sink in for a moment.

Even though we are in the strangest of times, these people have given up seeing any family or friends (I mean, anyone other than other members of the company) for three weeks. That might on paper not sound like a huge amount but it is when you think about it.

I essentially wanted to write this as a bit of a love letter to Emma Rice.
I've always been a fan of her work, from the first piece of hers I saw at the Globe (her superb production of Twelfth Night - who'd have thought Le Gateux Chocolat singing I Will Survive would work so well?!) and then her Kneehigh production of The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk (starring Marc Antolin). 

But it was when she started Wise Children that I properly discovered what an 'Emma Rice show' was, and realised it was absolutely my type of theatre. 

I loved Wise Children and I thought that Mallory Towers was one of the best pieces of theatre that I saw in 2019 (and was very much looking forward to seeing it again this summer until 2020 happened). She has such a distinct way of creating the worlds in which her pieces happen, and the quirkiness is what makes her style so unique and engaging.

In her pre-show speech before the show on Sunday, Emma (along with Tom Morris, the artistic director of the Bristol Old Vic) was met with a deafening applause that went on and on and on. It was an intensely moving thing, to be there in a small audience, to celebrate the achievement to playing to an online audience of 10,500 over the five shows and then get to do it to real people.
Emma said something that has stuck with me since Sunday, and it really is so true of how we are all feeling now.
"We are meant to be together, we are meant to be on this planet and we are meant to tell stories"

I don't think there was a dry eye in the house by the time she was done speaking, and that was before the show had started.
For a week, Emma Rice managed to create some normality in these weird times. Apart from there being less people in the auditorium, we saw a full production with it's full cast, and it was utterly wonderful

I love this show with all of my heart, and for it to be one of the first shows that I came back to after the longest period without theatre was incredibly special. 
These people, this show, this theatre, this music - it's all so personal to me in a way that I don't think any show has ever been (or possibly will ever be again.) You so rarely get a show that is 'your show' and I think this truly is mine.

We are being forced to adapt with the times for the foreseeable future, and in the grand scheme of things that is fine. We get that the world is going through a lot, and that we have to do things differently for a while. And we are capable of doing it. The thing we are not capable of is doing it without help.

I'm not gonna press any more on the last few weeks and the state of the world (mainly because I'm doing that in another blog post where I write a response to the absolute horror show coming from our Government) but know that it is still ongoing, like everything else...