Love, Me and Compost: A Double Bill of Love and Trash

Love, Me: 3.5 stars

Compost: 4 stars

Teaming up for a double-billed show, our very own MTSoc and Dramsoc have put together an original musical titled Love, Me, and an original play titled Compost, the latter of which was recently performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival over the summer.

Love, Me

Love, Me displays the relationship between Ivy and Bill, both at its beginning and its seemingly approaching end, spanning around a decade, exploring the importance of loving oneself in maintaining strong interpersonal relationships. Writing an original musical is no small feat, so massive congratulations to writers Chris Koray Araz, Fabiola Mann and Afkar Malik, all current students at Imperial. However, much as it saddens me to admit this, the music feels uninspired more often than not. This is both melodically and lyrically, with some extremely cliché lines like ‘she is imperfect, but I still love her’. They say one of the first rules to good creative writing is ‘show, don’t tell’, but the extremely literal lyrics leave little to the imagination. Throughout the show, it feels like the spoken dialogue is much stronger than the lyrics in progressing the story. Although the intentions behind portraying Ivy’s inner voice (simply called Voice, portrayed by Tash Cowan) directly are clear, the character is often irritating, overly dramatic, and turns ‘show’ to ‘tell’ consistently, taking away any room for individual thought processing on the events of the musical. Cowan does her best with the character, but the writing lets her down considerably. Indeed, a vital issue with the writing is the one-dimensionality of pretty much every character. This includes Ivy, the central character of the plot. At least we get to see her wonderfully acted by Ellie Morgan and Vasiliki Kalogianni in two different periods of her life.

The singing and acting are both very strong across the board, and the orchestration is well balanced and full-bodied, helping to elevate the score. Well, for the most part anyway. One of the highlights of the show was when the guitarist dropped his sheet music, and had to sit there in awkward silence, waiting for an appropriate time to pick it up from the floor. The direction and the lighting are also strong, with one complementing the other, often amplifying the funny and heartfelt moments from the script, which would otherwise have gone unnoticed by the audience.

There are some musical highlights, namely a waltzy tune halfway through performed by Ivy (Morgan), which is as close as the show gets to feeling complete, both technically and plot-wise, and the finale, which is predictably cheesy, but cute regardless. Successfully driving home its message of self-love, the final song and its presentation are effective. Although the song is very quick to make its point, it is overly long, repeating itself time and time again, not adding anything new to what has been said in its first minute.

Overall, Love, Me is entertaining, well-acted and makes its point heard loud and clear. The writers have achieved the extremely difficult task of writing a complete musical from scratch, which I applaud. However, the production falls short in its writing, which lacks the subtlety needed to be more than just entertainment.

Compost

Written by Calum Drysdale, another current Imperial College undergraduate, Compost tells the tale of two ex-government workers who attempt to scam the wealthy homeowners of Amersham, by selling bins that supposedly turn plastic into compost. The acting in Compost is outstanding. Specifically, the manic personality of one of the con artists (Ben Hayward) which very sucessfully complements the self-assured demeanour of his co-worker (Vaisnavi Ravichandran). Colm Gleeson, a new addition to the cast after the end of the sucessful Edinburgh run, replacing Prithu Banerjee, plays one hell of a drag queen. He is wonderful, delivering an extremely high-energy performance that elevates the play every time he is on stage.

The play caters towards millennials, referencing things like Britney Spears’ mental breakdown in 2007 and Kim Possible. However the play is much deeper than funny one-liners, as it is, at its core, an exploration of corruption, which feels extremely relevant in today’s political climate. The audience is left to ponder over possible parallels to current affairs. Luckily the play never takes itself too seriously, avoiding falling into the pitfall of earnestly trying to push a message, prefering instead to simply have fun.The set is simple yet effective, a testament to the immense amount of work put in by Lydia Edwards. However, what really sells the show’s appearance to me is the lighting design, which is nothing short of gorgeous, often complex and perfectly timed. The choice of music (mostly early-2000s pop tunes) is also extremely smart, further adding to the ‘millennial’ feel and sprinkling moments of lighthearted comedy in what is often a lot to digest.

The play is extremely fast paced, and quite confusing at times. I think it suffer slightly from the length of time that it has been running, begining with previews in mid-August and only just coming to an end now. The play has clearly undergone a lot of development and while no doubt everything made sense to the cast, we the audience felt a bit left behind.

Just when everything starts making sense (if I can reasonably use the word) the bonkers ending upset everything. Really. I can’t quite describe it, but I can reassure you that whatever it is that happens is incredibly funny.

Compost is extremely entertaining. Its abstract nature is at times a bit much, but at its best, it is simultaneously laugh-out-loud funny and thought-provoking. At its worst, it goes slightly over the top and tips into being confusing.