Freedom of speech has been a fundamental issue through the ages but, excepting 11am on Remembrance Sunday and certain medical conditions, freedom to speak is something most of us take for granted and some even see as their main objective in life. The unique value of words was explored in Sam Steiner’s award-winning play, Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons, a two-handed romcom set in a surreal world of “quietude” where humans are forbidden to say more than 140 words a day (dramaturgically establishing any means of checking or enforcing this absurd rule is quietly ignored).
The entrepreneurial Royal Ballet principal, Alexander Campbell, had the idea of using dance to illustrate this antithetical theatrical concept of word restriction and it has taken his production company and collaborators exactly three years to get the concept from first meeting to stage. The whimsical original title (a comment in the play by Bernadette, the female character, to casually throw away a quota of words she hadn’t yet used) has been replaced with the more salient and descriptive The Limit.
The play’s original director, Ed Madden, came back on board for this danced interpretation and it is such a thrill to experience Kristen McNally’s choreography once more. She has always thought outside the box in her choreographic language and was the perfect choice to add sequences of movement to the substantial spoken text. I’ve always felt that she has been somewhat overlooked in The Royal Ballet’s hierarchy of choreographers and I hope that her thoughtful and descriptive movement in this piece will lead to more opportunities.
The other added dimension comes with a light score from Isobel Waller-Bridge (a magical surname in theatre these days) performed by a quartet of musicians from the side of the stage and in the stalls circle. And with just a bare stage to play with Lee Curran’s lighting designs were significant in establishing mood and transitions.
Campbell and Francesca Hayward play the couple struggling to come to terms with a relationship already complicated by a brick-throwing ex, challenging jobs and contrasting political views and now fettered by this limit on communication such that their uber-sentimental “love-oo” becomes a wasted statement. They resort to truncated language and coded numbers to express themselves, even trying to master the dots and dashes of Morse code.
Quite apart from this central conceit of word restriction, this is essentially a love story, which benefits from a palpable chemistry between the players. Both are comfortable with the considerable amount of spoken text (although there were moments when the music obscured some phrases in Hayward’s speech) and also give excellent a capella performances of the opening lines to Dancing in the Dark, morphing into a dance sequence to Bruce Springsteen’s timeless track that was such a burst of rock energy that I momentarily expected Courtney Cox to step onstage and dance with them (incredibly it is almost 40 years since Springsteen pulled a young starlet from the audience, thus launching the career of the actress who will ever be remembered as Monica from Friends)!
McNally’s choreography slotted into and alongside the spoken text in a way that was both seamless and episodic in terms of the relationship journey. At their first meeting (it takes place in a cat cemetery in Steiner’s play) the shyness of the pair is illustrated in a beautiful flowing duet where they never touch and as the relationship develops, tortured by his resentment of her job as a lawyer and her suspicions about the ex, the choreography becomes more frenetic, punctuated by passionate reconciliations.
Campbell’s performance as the man (unnamed here, but Oliver in Steiner’s play) was an excellently observed portrait of dishevelled male uncertainty – awkwardness at the beginning of the relationship, deceit regarding his ex – coupled with a principled stand against authority (including lobbing that brick through the window of WH Smith, although this turns out to be a euphemism for another act of betrayal). Hayward could read the Checkatrade directory aloud and still be mesmerising. She has the allure of beauty that I imagine launched a thousand ships and procured the Krupp diamond for Elizabeth Taylor and as well as being an extraordinary dancer, she can act and sing with the best of them. It will be interesting to see if the alternate cast of Hannah Rudd and Jacob Wye bring similar chemistry to the piece.
The Limit is almost 80 minutes of non-stop work for the two performers, and it was an arresting experience even if the central satirical conceit was a hard concept to swallow. Humorous newscast voiceovers punctuated the text at key moments of transition including a plaintiff query from one newsreader about what will happen to them with a limited word count (the fictional policy of quietude apparently began in Oslo so watch out for those Norwegians!).
