“Some Small Love Story” – simple beautiful storytelling

I saw this show at the Arts Theatre, London last night, it is on just for a few nights at the end of a tour.

4 actors, a black box stage and a pianist on a keyboard: simple story telling and it works beautifully. It proves you don’t need a cast of 20 for a musical to work.. and there were definitely no dance numbers in this, just minimum movement and actors facing front to tell the weaving two tales of love stories come to an end.

Great storytelling and I particularly enjoyed the male harmonies. The very interesting direction by Noreen Kershaw made the most of the simplicity, stripping back excess to reveal the sadness of the tales. Noreen Kershaw is a Bafta Award winning director (Coronation Street for Best Soap and Continuing Drama) and she also directed some of the great BBC ‘Moving On’ shows.  article here on the director

The line I remember (from the actor who is talking about losing his love in a car crash) is ‘for the rest of my life I will feel I have been shot’ It may be badly paraphrased by me but it had an impact. So great to see that Edinburgh musical shows getting on tour. Well done all involved and to the production company getting it out there on tour.

This is what it says on the production company website:

production website

“Some Small Love Story opened at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2011 to overwhelming acclaim from both festival-goers and press. Boldly staged, the show made its name as a delicate and spellbinding new piece of musical theatre and was nominated for Musical Theatre Matters’ BEST LYRICS award and listed as one of The Stage’s Must-See Productions. Under the direction of Bafta-winner Noreen Kershaw (whose credits include the Lowry Theatre’s Fireflies and television’s Coronation Street and Shameless) Some Small Love Story will tour the UK from February 2013, double billed with the gorgeous folk musical Beulah, directed by Tom Bellerby and with original music by Jim Harbourne and Edward Wren. This will be a tour not to be missed!”