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Love Lessons: The Diary of Joan Wyndham

Adapted by
Maggie Contreras

Directed by Nicolette Lee

Finborough Theatre

28 April – 5 May, 2008

Ibsen Sta

zens

A review by Marion Drew for EXTRA! EXTRA!

Love Lessons, The Diary of Joan Wyndham is an adaptation of the book Love Lessons, first published in 1985 when Joan was in her 60s. The play takes excerpts from the diaries that Joan kept faithfully as a young woman. It gives an account of life as an upper-class, high spirited and virginal young girl and her experiences in 1940 at the height of the Blitz. At this time, Joan was eighteen years old, a young, first drama and then art student, living with her devout Catholic mother just off the Fulham road, quite literally around the corner from the Finborough theatre. The area was also the heartland of Little Chelsea’s Bohemian centre.

Joan wrote with a disarming, wide-eyed honesty, "the war was the first exciting thing that had ever happened to me," and wry wit, "well, how can I describe him?," she wrote of Gerhardt, the refugee German sculptor who was one of her first acquaintances, “if I was feeling romantic I should say Pan, if realistic, then the most depraved long-haired Bohemian, in a blue shirt and corduroy pants, that ever drank cheap red wine."

Funny, candid and very charming, clearly Joan Wyndham was a young woman to be reckoned with. In the play we are taken with Joan on her personal journey of love and war, and how interesting and exciting the window is that she gives us into that life.

It was disappointing then to watch a performance that I felt did not have the energy and verve to match. There were moments when I felt that Maggie Contreras was going to take the plunge and allow Joan’s personality to shine through, but what came across instead was a pretty and charming, but ultimately rather shallow and lack-lustre person, which did not seem to do justice at all to the Joan that one reads about in her obituaries (she died in 2007).

The period dress was beautiful, the set worked well for this intimate piece, and I enjoyed the sound, with excerpts from radio broadcasts of the time, which were interesting in their own right. The production, to its credit, did foreground the text, and the excerpts chosen were often very funny and poignant, but for me the pace was tedious and the vitality and sparkle that could have characterised the piece, just really wasn’t there and the potential, so clearly evident, wasn’t quite realised.

Monday 28th April, Sunday 4th May and Monday 5th May
Performances at 7.30pm

Performance length approximately 1 hour.

TICKETS: £13, £9 cons.

Telephone bookings: 0844 847 1652 (24 hours, no booking fees)

Book online: www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk

The Finborough Theatre,118 Finborough Road, London, SW10 9ED

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