Lemons Lemons Lemons - Harold Pinter / Manchester / Brighton

I noticed. Glad of it, Hopefully I'll manage to catch it once during the run...

This production doesn't, in fact, last an hour: it's a solid 95 minutes based on tonight, so you'll get an extra 35 minutes for your money lol. That is by design, rather than just a feature of it being an early preview, as the signs around the theatre all say "95 minutes without an interval." I think it's been reworked significantly by the author.

I absolutely LOVED the show tonight! I laughed and I was moved to tears.

Two wonderful, teasing, vulnerable, humorous performances, that completely convey the value of communication, words and love itself.

Some spoilers follow. . .

Great love stories generally work better for being denied something. Frequently, that thing is life itself, as in "Romeo and Juliet," or any number of operas that have one of the lovers collapse with tuberculosis, choking out one last magnificent aria as they do.

Even great happy love stories are enhanced by some great lack (eg Darcy's lack of tact and humility vs Elizabeth Bennett's lack of money and opportunities).

Often we set love stories in historical periods where there was some great lack: eg gay or interracial love stories when horrible laws made things illegal and dangerous.

In this love story, the period is the future, and the illegality pertains to speaking more than 140 words per day.

It is of course a gimmick of a premise, that only holds up through a wilful suspension of disbelief on the part of the audience. For example, if it is ok to tap morse code on the floor, why not just learn British Sign Language and say whatever you want? Why even enact such a silly law in the first place?

If you let the gimmickiness get to you, you will be like a person who watches "Back to the Future" and says it's no fun because time loops make no sense. I'd say just run with it lol.

I did, and Aidan Turner and Jenna Coleman are so incredibly precious together in this, their relationship chemistry adorably believable and believably adorable, with Turner's rising playful cadences perfectly balanced by Coleman's equally playful mimicking caustic rejoinders.

Class imbalances, money imbalances, and Orwellian political imbalances, specified by the script, build insecurities and vulnerabilities into these two characters that make you doubly root for each of these playful witty people, and even more for a potential love match that might salve these deficiencies and create a more perfect romantic whole.

Scenes that involve fulsome playful banter become poignant in the knowledge that the word-denying law will take this all away. And scenes that follow the law become poignant for awareness of the banter that is no longer possible. And by intercutting such scenes in a nonlinear way, we are always heartbreakingly aware of all of it.

And, as if by magic, small things like cheeky wordless gesturing glances (Turner) and nose twitching playfulness (Coleman) are magnified into the potential of a great love.

The whole non-linear, flashing from scene to scene, shape of the play is similar to Nick Payne's "Constellations," and this show captures the magic of that play's sense of life's infinite possibilities.

This being an early preview, Turner forgot his lines once, and repeated a scene, and never has such a thing felt so perfectly part of the concept (words proscribed by memory are as much a denial of something wonderful as words proscribed by law) that the magic of the concept felt enhanced by the moment.

I expect that it has been hard for the actors to learn this ever-expanding play, as it is still listed as 75 minutes running time on the ATG website, and it was fully and intentionally 20 minutes longer than that in tonight's preview.

I wouldn't lose a single extra precious word. Wonderful, and I'd love to see it again in a more mature form after press night. 4 and a half stars from me.

Thanks for this review Steve. I'm going to see it in Manchester, and I'm really looking forward to it now!

In case people are wondering where the rush tickets are, I have just managed to get one in stalls row F - the seat next to mine is on sale on ATG for £125 :-O unbelievable. 

I thought this was lovely. Like others above already said, you do have to suspend your logical brain from asking questions and just follow but if you manage that, it is very good; I found the relationship relatable (the cheese grater part I completely got) and the two actors are incredibly sweet together.
As for the seats, if like me you are short, there are quite a few scenes when they are sitting down, so unless you are in the front 2 rows, anybody sat in front will be in your sightline. I suppose that's always the case but I noticed it more as I don't usually go for the mid stalls seats / so called 'premium' ones- I certainly would not choose to at the Pinter (not that I could ever afford to sit there again anytime soon unless with another rush ticket lol)

Pretty solid. Good performances from the two leads and the show wouldn’t work at all without them and their very believable relationship. The timeline jumping about took a bit of getting used to (hadn’t read much about the plot beforehand!) and the main concept of the play, whilst interesting, did start to wear a bit thin for me by the end. I enjoyed it for what it was but I don’t think I’d have wanted it to go on for any longer than it did!

I got Rush tickets in the stalls (not without some difficulty!) and it reminded me why I usually go for front row seats where I can. The rake in the Pinter is pretty poor so, as Alessia has said, be prepared to have lots of heads in your way! But would still rather have put up with that than paid the prices they’re charging 😂

Quite enjoyed it last night - 3.5 stars based on the acting. I don't find the suspension of disbelief the play asks for that outrageous, no more than any dystopian novel or film requires. Could perhaps be shortened a little, it takes a long time to reach the conclusion once the concept is played through.

Fair warning about B1 in the Dress Circle - there's a pillar intruding from the side, so if you're of moderate height it will be actively painful. View is great though. Managed to get a single rush ticket through TodayTix at 11.25, so perhaps they were shifting some individual leftover seats.

I cottoned on pretty quickly that the play's device was so full of logical holes, that it was necessary not to question it but to indulge this ultimate constraint on free speech, to see what the exploration revealed about the human condition. Unlike Nick Payne's very different Constellations, to which Five Lemons has been compared, the answer is not very much.

We are very much in emperor's-new-clothes territory, and I'm sure there will be much pseudo-intellectual discourse venerating the quality of the cloth.

The creatives involved have presumably recognised there is something awry, as the running time has been chopped to precisely 80 minutes. I was grateful it was not longer, but I did wonder what was in the excised 15 minutes.

Aidan Turner is the better and more believable of the two performers, but, from my front-row-stalls vantage point, I was not buying the chemistry between the two characters. I think this was down to direction. They barely ever touch. Maybe that was the point, but, if so, they not only inhabit an unrecognisable world, their behaviour, as a romantically-involved couple, is entirely unrelatable too.

Meanwhile, a giant, rear, curved wall of shelving units, stuffed with household paraphernalia and replete with flashing strip lighting, gives way in the final third to kitchen utensils et al suspended in the air. If there were an award for most pretentious set design, this would be a contender. Heaven knows what it was meant to signify.

Strictly for die-hard fans of the stars only.

Two stars.

One act: 19:48-21:08

I see that the press reviews are in and mostly 3 stars, which I think is fair

I quite enjoyed this. Thought Aidan and Jenna had great chemistry and the premise was interesting. I did get distracted during scenes thinking that surely that's over his word limit though.

Agree with both comments I do think it feels exposed for what it is in the Harold Pinter, its not the worst play I have seen but it doesn't really go anywhere