Despite its modern-day setting, ‘Love Quirks: A New Musical’ at The Other Palace feels strangely stuck in the ’90s. As a result, it offers little that speaks to the challenges twenty-somethings face today when navigating city, work, and love lives in our fast, insular, and impatient digital world.
Life is messy, and love even more so. Discovering what and who we want, while separating our fantasy from the harsh realities of life, can be a minefield that sees more than a few of us step on several incendiary devices. That very minefield sits at the heart of Mark Chider and Seth Bisen-Hersh’s Love Quirks: A New Musical, making its London debut at The Other Palace following a successful off-Broadway run in 2022.
In moving the New York set production to London, director Cecille Fray, Childer’s, and Bisen-Hersh attempt to capture the single, flatmate scene of London’s twenty-something community, who, like their New York counterparts, find themselves having to share houses and flats in a city where rent prices are excessive and opportunities for living are limited.
Set-piece scenes are given a unique British voice, from a New York Yankees game transformed into a North London Derby between Arsenal and Tottenham to several delicate adjustments to the musical score to incorporate Britishisms. Add a cracking quartet of performers, Tom Newland, Clodagh Greene, Lewis Bear Brown, and Ayesha Patel, along with colourful set design and an intimate studio performance space, and Love Quirks: A New Musical should be a winning production full of energy, heart, humour, and contemporary discussion. However, despite solid performances and moments of brilliance, Love Quirks struggles to find its voice.
The setup is simple: a Friends-inspired tale of four housemates thrown together, each with a history and each carrying emotional baggage from previous relationships. Lili (Patel) is still trying to navigate her feelings for Ryan, who came out and destroyed her hopes of a relationship. At the same time, Ryan (Bear Brown) is navigating the world of online gay dating and needs to reassess what he really wants from a man. Meanwhile, Steph (Greene) is attempting to move beyond a failed relationship, and the American chef Chris (Newland) is similarly trying to move on from a fiancée who cheated on him. However, to add to the ‘Love Quirks’, Chris and Steph have a history, and each of our young romantics is facing a crossroads in their life where the freedom of youth butts up against the responsibilities and disappointments of adulthood.
Performances are engaging, dynamic, and entertaining, and several musical numbers are memorable, especially those with Sondheim-esque qualities; however, the storybook is thin, and it never allows us to fully understand the motivations of each character or the complex relationships surrounding them. Instead, we jump from one musical number to another with little drama in between to join up the narrative. There are nuggets of brilliance in Love Quirks, but despite these, I found myself checking my watch on several occasions. Humour is well-timed and perfectly executed throughout, but again it lacks a sharp, contemporary edge in exploring relationships when compared with recent plays, such as the outstanding Four Play at the King’s Head Theatre.
Ultimately, Love Quirks is a beautifully performed and solidly staged production that lacks bite, edge and the essential character development needed for us to bond with the performances on stage. Instead, it’s a musical that opts for a light, frothy approach, entertaining in the moment but quickly forgettable once the footlights fade. Despite its modern-day setting, Love Quirks feels strangely stuck in the ’90s. As a result, it offers little that speaks to the challenges twenty-somethings face today when navigating city, work, and love lives in our fast, insular and impatient digital world.
Love Quirks: A New Musical is playing at The Other Palace until Sunday, October 12.
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