Lovesong (Oberon Modern Plays)

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The production values within Love Song are enough to make you swoon, too. Carolyn Downing’s sound design with Ian William Galloway’s video projections evoke the emotions that Frantic Assembly seeks to gain from its audience. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t moved emotionally and shed a tear or two by the end; only a man with a heart of stone couldn’t be moved by Love Song.

Leanne Rowe and Edward Bennett play the young couple, while Sian Phillips and Sam Cox play their older incarnations. Directed by Frantic Assembly’s artistic directors Scott Graham and Steven Hoggett, Lovesong continues at the Lyric until 28 January. Bafta Film Awards 2012: Nominations". BBC News. 27 March 2012. Archived from the original on 18 January 2012 . Retrieved 17 January 2012. Morgan is stingy with her facts. At the beginning of their marriage, Maggie and Billy emigrate to an unnamed part of America, as if the playwright wants to separate them from family and friends. The times are only lightly suggested when, in what must be the ’70s, Billy objects to Maggie taking a job in the local library … While Morgan struggles to avoid sentimentality, the production, with its musical underscoring and evocative images, is less restrained … Apart from the occasional clumsy piece of choreography, Frantic Assembly and Morgan have created a highly emotional, tender piece, in which the intensity is remarkably sustained over 90 minutes. It feels as if one is holding one’s breath from the first line to the last. Ageing, memory and the passage of time are powerful themes that affect us all. No wonder it’s a case of tissues at the ready.” The Mistress Contract at The Royal Court Theatre". The Royal Court Theatre. Archived from the original on 15 September 2013 . Retrieved 13 September 2013.What's going on between Abi Morgan and Kristin Scott Thomas?". www.standard.co.uk. 7 February 2014. Archived from the original on 13 April 2021 . Retrieved 13 April 2021. Morgan gained her first television writing credit in 1998 on the continuing ITV drama series Peak Practice, following that with a television play My Fragile Heart (2000) and a BBC2 drama Murder in 2002, starring Julie Walters. [4]

Morgan, Abi (2022). This is Not a Pity Memoir. London: John Murray Press. ISBN 978-1-5293-8833-6. OCLC 1313596963.This contemporary piece interweaves the older and younger characters, exploring and replaying memories together – almost like a dance. Lovesong Programme Follow Link to Photos by Mike Watling Press Releases ABI MORGAN’S writing for the screen includes The Invisible Woman, the Margaret Thatcher film Iron Lady, starring Meryl Streep, the flagship BBC TV drama The Hour and the BAFTA award-winning drama Sex Traffic (Channel 4). She has recently collaborated with Steve McQueen and Michael Fassbender on the upcoming feature film Shame. She previously worked with Frantic Assembly on the much praised Tiny Dynamite, and her other previous writing for the stage includes The Night Is Darkest Before The Dawn (part of the Tricycle Theatre’s Great Game season), Fugee (NT New Connections), Tender (Hampstead) and Splendour (Paines Plough). Morgan wrote the legal drama The Split, about the private and professional lives of divorce lawyers, first shown on BBC1 in April 2018. Lovesongby Abi Morgan was presented by Banbury Cross Players at The Mill Theatre from 5th to 8th July 2017.

SIÂN PHILLIPS is one of Britain’s most respected actors. Her recent stage work includes the role of Juliet in Juliet and her Romeo (Bristol Old Vic), Les Liaisons Dangereuses (Broadway) and Calendar Girls (West End/tour). Her screen work includes her BAFTA-winning role in I, Claudius (BBC TV), as well as such seminal works as Goodbye Mr Chips, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Dune. She has also performed live with musician Rufus Wainwright at the Old Vic. Time is fluid as their past and present selves collide in this emotional drama. Love is a leap of faith, and the optimism of youth becomes the wisdom of experience. In January 2020, Morgan said that she was recovering from breast cancer. [15] She had chemotherapy and a mastectomy. [16]

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Morgan was appointed OBE in the 2018 Birthday Honours, "For services to Theatre and Screenwriting". [17] Selected works [ edit ] Plays [ edit ] Lovesong from acclaimed playwright Abi Morgan played at the Drum Theatre Plymouth 30th September to 15 October 2011, then opened in Washington DC in Autumn 2011 followed by a run at Sheffield Crucible from 19th October, before transferring to the Lyric Hammersmith, London where it was captured by Digital Theatre. Abi Morgan is an award-winning writer whose plays have been widely performed across the country. Her hit drama The Split recently aired its final series on the BBC. Ravindran, Manori (27 January 2020). "Writer Abi Morgan Reveals Breast Cancer Diagnosis". Variety. Archived from the original on 28 January 2020 . Retrieved 13 March 2020. Directed by Frantic Assembly's artistic directors Scott Graham and Steven Hoggett, the production will tour the UK, beginning on 30 September 2011 at the Drum Theatre, Plymouth, with a three week London run at the Lyric Hammersmith from 11 January 2012 (Plymouth press night 3 October; London press night 12 January).

After initial ambitions to become an actress herself, she decided to become a writer while reading drama and literature at Exeter University. [5] She then took a postgraduate writing course at the Central School of Speech and Drama. [4] Writing career [ edit ] Theatre [ edit ] Abi Morgan’s writing for the screen includes The Invisible Woman, the Margaret Thatcher film Iron Lady, starring Meryl Streep, the flagship BBC TV drama The Hour and the BAFTA award-winning drama Sex Traffic (Channel 4). She has recently collaborated with Steve McQueen and Michael Fassbender on the upcoming feature film Shame. She previously worked with Frantic Assembly on the much praised Tiny Dynamite, and her other previous writing for the stage includes The Night Is Darkest Before The Dawn (part of the Tricycle Theatre’s Great Game season), Fugee (NT New Connections), Tender (Hampstead) and Splendour (Paines Plough). a b c "Writer Abi Morgan has last laugh at the Emmys". Wales Online. 23 September 2013. Archived from the original on 25 September 2013 . Retrieved 23 September 2013. There's sensitive work around him from Leanne Rowe, Sam Cox and the spry Siân Phillips. The production is deftly constructed, and some sequences are delicately balletic. Many people will find it deeply moving, and the subject matter is undeniably poignant.’ Scott Graham and Steven Hoggett, who share the credits for direction and choreography, create moments of gorgeous physicality. Ian William Galloway's elegant video design is full of swooshing starlings, and there's spacious music to define the mood.Love Song is a piece of theatre that is about growing old and falling in love. About the endurance of relationships and the decaying of the human body. It’s a refreshing, more distilled Frantic Assembly production, and one that will be sure to strike an emotional cord within each and every one of its audience members. If Love Song has anything to teach a younger audience, it is to enjoy life to its fullest, to accept love when it happens, and to understand that relationships are about being in a constant flux, even if you’re nearing ‘the end’. Nothing is a given, and everything is to play for. A caring and weepy night of theatre. a b Lewis, Helen (15 October 2015). "Abi Morgan on Suffragette: "These were voiceless women. We gave them a voice" ". New Statesman. Archived from the original on 17 February 2017 . Retrieved 16 February 2017. Frantic Assembly today announced the full cast for their touring production of Abi Morgan's new play LOVESONG. Renowned actress Siân Phillips will be joined by Sam Cox, who will play her husband, and Leanne Rowe and Edward Bennett, who will play the same couple as their younger selves. SAM COX’S recent stage work includes Anne Boleyn, All’s Well That Ends Well (both Shakespeare’s Globe), Inherit the Wind (Old Vic), Arcadia (West End), God in Ruins (RSC/Soho), Macbeth and King John (both RSC). His film and TV work includes Doctor Who (BBC TV), Prime Suspect (Granada) and Hippy Hippy Shake. The high-concept premise is that the same couple is portrayed by Sam Cox and Sian Phillips over a few days late in life, and in their 20s and 30s by the younger actors. Each pair of actors almost always interacts only with each other, but all four are frequently on stage at the same time: the end of one scene overlaps with the next, and Morgan skillfully sets up plot points and themes in one frame that are supplemented or advanced by information provided in the other. Older Billy opens the fridge in his spacious middle-American kitchen, and out pops Margaret in a ’60s outfit, gleefully exploring the home they’re just moving into. Going through boxes of stuff from the attic, Maggie wonders why they ever needed those silly Chinese lanterns — and the lanterns then appear in a climactic scene in the earlier plot.