Imagine an alternative reality in which the government decides to limit the number of words you can speak per day to 140. And the public actually votes for it. That’s the world – or the UK to be precise – that Sam Steiner’s 2015 play envisions. Absurd, isn’t it, to imagine that the British people, in the mid-teens of this century, would knowingly vote for something that would obviously make their lives worse?
Oh. Maybe not so absurd.
But Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons isn’t about Brexit. It’s more cerebral, poetic and personal than that. This isn’t sci-fi as political satire, it’s human behaviour sifted through high concept.
It also marks Lighthouse Productions’ debut on the Oxford stage: a confident, passionate and technically tight production that bodes well for the future.
The play is a two-hander, examining the bond between Oliver (Kit Rush in his first acting role) and Bernadette (Caeli Colgan, veteran of many a great show). Through the ups and downs of their relationship, Big Themes come under Steiner’s melodramatic microscope: prioritising work or home life; the value of (literal) free speech; class divisions; democracy; and above all, the idea of waste: waste of time, waste of emotions, waste of words.
The play constantly flips between two periods: the time before the ‘Hush Law’ and the time after. On a stage devoid of set, apart from a box covered in newspaper, the difference is expressed through a simple lighting switch: warm for the old, chatty days; cold for post-Hush austerity. Rush and Colgan also switch physical styles between the two states: pre-change they lounge on the ground, kiss, and move at ease; post-change they stand stiffly, arms limp, gazing at each other with eyebrows furrowed as they constantly try to think of the most abbreviated way of saying what’s on their mind.
The most powerful impression that arises from all this is the sense of language – words specifically – as a luxury, and how easily we squander what really matters. It exposes our tendency to use words up carelessly, to splurge them in variety and profusion whenever we get the chance (perhaps more in Oxford than almost anywhere else). It comes across as thoughtless indulgence, like letting a tap run for a whole minute just because you want the water to be really cold for a drink. But, like oil or rhinoceroses, when you make words a finite resource, you begin to realise just how valuable they are. And the world without them looks a cold, bleak place indeed. The title of this play itself is a display of the conspicuous verbal waste (I would say ‘persiflage’ but it seems too wasteful) that the characters occasionally throw in each other’s faces to express the despair of their situation.
There is one further set element in Lemons, and that is the video sequences provided by George Robson. Robson has already made several films, as well as multiple screen elements for plays, and he is clearly a cinematographer to watch. The video pieces are surreal, mesmeric and profound. And the most sci-fi scene in the play – the part where Bernadette and Oliver undergo the Clockwork-Orange-style operation to limit their speech – is a fantastically psychedelic montage of eyes and interference, like a mash-up of Ringu and Un Chien Andalou.
What doesn’t work so well is not the production’s fault, but the playwright’s. Having set up a truly fascinating and original premise, Steiner sits back on his laurels and doesn’t really take the idea anywhere interesting beyond the idea itself. The flipping between the pre- and post-Hush worlds makes minimal narrative advancement in either of them. There is a sense of things moving forward, but Steiner’s interest is really comparing the two conditions, not imbuing them with plot. It’s like watching a revolving, two-sided sculpture in a museum: each time it goes around you notice more of the detail on each side, but it never actually changes.
So this is more of a meditation than a story. It raises fascinating moral questions and teases plot-based possibilities, but it doesn’t quite have the nerve to dive in and explore them. It never explains why the authorities have brought in this law, why people voted for it, or what happens as a result. The tale of Bernadette and Oliver is one of fleeting tableaux rather than connected episodes.
But some of those tableaux have wrenching irony. The pre-Hush scene where the two characters thoughtlessly add ‘I love you’ to everything they say, whether complaint or compliment, feels both indulgent and essentially human. And the scene where they complain about the word ‘really’, because it’s a meaningless qualifier, is weighted with dread as we know that, before long, ‘really’ will be as rare as caviar.
Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons is a great idea spoilt only by its determination not to explore itself. And with that, I think I’ve used up at least a week’s worth of words. I’ve said enough.