No Love Lost by Rony Robinson

Reviewed by The Doorsteppa Magazine

With the weather sizzling outside, a packed audience placed themselves into the ever glorious Corner Playhouse for a new complex romantic comedy.

The play, written by local Sheffield icon and radio presenter Rony Robinson, was commissioned as part of the 1998 BT Biennial.

In certain ways it was an unorthodox play by The City Players in that in the first act, the time sequence went backwards, and in the second act it covered the same time span but forwards!

Telling a story of friction between three generations - grandparents, parents and children - the parents separate, as do the grandparents, and caught in the middle are two daughters.

Matthew Joynes as the husband (and first act narrator) Max, and Linda Munton (second act narrator) as his estranged wife, gave powerful performances throughout. Carole Wilkinson and John Donnelly were, as always, excellent.

Newcomers, Tim Burgoyne, Jaz Bentley and Todd Hardman were outstanding and comedically stole the show. Hopefully we’ll be seeing more of them in the future.

Alex Dornan (playing Anna) and Cathy Di Nitto (that surname rings a bell!) hit all the right notes to keep the story from appearing stagnated, and never once did it feel repetitive. Within another impressive set there are multiple scenes, but as Act 1 takes place in one apartment and Act 2 in another there is no break in continuity. The characters of Max and his wife Kate carry us back or forward in time with witty asides.

The characters are vividly drawn from the theatricality of amateur thespian Kate to the withdrawn guitar-playing Emma. The three generations of this totally dysfunctional family cannot be denied.

Robinson’s dialogue is particularly well character-orientated, giving them a three-dimensional quality which the players brought to splendid life under the direction of Nick Di Nitto.

There is a radiance to the closing ‘Shakespearian’ matchmaking and it was beautifully captured.

The play as always was rapturously appreciated by an enthusiastic audience.

"No Love Lost by Rony Robinson". The Doorsteppa, July 2014. Print.