Good Intentions Do Not Make For Compelling Drama: Reviewing "I Love You, Now What?"

★★ | The problem with I Love You, Now What? is not that it is a bad production by any means. It is gorgeously performed, thoughtfully scored, and effectively designed… albeit lazily written. Even when the show begins to get exhausting in patches, you choose to turn a blind eye to the problems because deep down you know that its heart is in the right place. Yet, as I exited the quaint premises of Park Theatre, I found myself asking the question: here's yet another story on grief and loss, but now what? 

This Edinburgh Fringe debutante follows the story of Ava (Sophie Craig in top-notch form), who is grappling with the knowledge of her aging father's imminent death due to cancer. She meets Theo (an earnest Any Umerah, whom you might recognise from Apple TV’s Ted Lasso) one night at a bar, and what begins as harmless flirtation soon turns into a one-night stand, eventually snowballing into a full-blown relationship. But there's a caveat: the knowledge of her father’s imminent death looms large over Ava’s relationship with Theo, and on more than one occasion threatens to consume it whole. 

The cast of I Love You, Now What?. Photo Credit: Lidia Crisafulli

The narrative trajectory of I Love You, Now What? is nothing but predictable. Girl meets Boy. Boy falls in love hard. The Girl falls in love harder. The Girl has “daddy issues” (honestly, who doesn’t?). Girl projects said "daddy issues" onto Boy. Boy takes it on at first and is open to working through them. The Girl is unable to navigate them though, and the growing issues tear their relationship apart. Girl struggles. Girl and Boy eventually reconcile and the "daddy" issues get addressed (somewhat). But once again I ask – now what? 

Barring the use of a singular set piece involving a wooden piano, there is little within these 90 minutes that should take you by surprise. We begin the play with Ava telling her father that they should name his final composition "Hope" because that is the only emotion worth living for. It is on this very piano that Theo makes love to Ava (he is a man of culture and claims The Notebook to be his favourite film over Ava’s basic choice of Titanic). As Ava’s father (Ian Puleston-Davies in the production’s most measured performance) struggles to battle cancer, this central piano gets broken apart. 

However, the most moving sequence of the play arrives at the climax, when the two broken pieces of the music instrument are arranged to resemble rocks alongside an unnamed beach. As Ava and Theo sit there and reminisce about the year gone by (with a generous amount of screaming the c-word), we as audience members feel an iota of genuine pathos for these characters for the first time. In this rare moment of mundanity, Craig finds an unsullied sense of beauty that is grounded and moving, making the ensuing exchange between the play’s leads deeply relatable. Even as you foresee the conversation heading towards a well-charted denouement, Craig surprises you by pushing the narrative further (and, in my opinion, not in a good way).

The cast of I Love You, Now What?. Photo Credit: Lidia Crisafulli

Growing up, I remember hearing the late Bengali queer director Rituparno Ghosh tell a duo of freshly minted Bengali filmmakers that the best cinematic depictions of grief always stem from those who understand its complexity as an eventual achievement of a gutting intensity – that escapes the binaries of linguistic expression. Yet here, instead of ending her play on a note of hollow silence, Craig pushes her narrative into a further ten minutes of banter. 

Watching I Love You, Now What? is like being given a series of axioms, but never once told why we must hold them true. We are told about the importance of acceptance as a necessary step in letting go of grief. However, we are never told why we should care for this grief. We see a woman’s life crumble because of her ailing father, but we are not once told why the stakes are as high as the play claims them to be. Who was Ava’s mother? Did Ava lose her tragically as well? What kind of memories does she have attached to her father that makes farewell so difficult for her? Has she been in a relationship before she met Theo? What is it about him that fuels such an instant click? Yes, for sure there is the burning sexual desire, but beyond that, what is within the essence of this relationship that makes breaking up in the face of grief so damn hard?

The cast of I Love You, Now What?. Photo Credit: Lidia Crisafulli

As I stepped out of the Park Theatre, I was pleasantly surprised by a lady holding a box of tissues for every viewer exiting the theatre. Later, I came to understand that the show's first performance elicited such an emotional response from the audience that on every subsequent night, tissues were offered to combat the tears that the production team was sure would follow upon the show's conclusion.

Even though such a decision has me thoroughly puzzled, I do not wish to undermine the earnestness of the production itself. Inspired by Craig’s own experiences with the grief of losing her father, and the subsequent breakup of her own relationship back then, I Love You, Now What? has a beating heart that is at its core. But having one is never enough, for what we witness on stage is a deeply saccharine and overly sentimental look at the contours of grief and loss. In underplaying the comedy for Pinterest-esque quotations, the show loses clarity on why the grief at its nexus is as crushing as it claims to be. More often than not, good intentions do not make for the best dramas.

★★

I Love You, Now What? runs at the Park Theatre until 24 August.