Review: No Love Songs (Southwark Playhouse, Elephant)

Review by Beth Bowden

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Our lives are shaped by music: nursery rhymes sung as children, bands we obsessively listen to as teenagers, and the songs we fall in desperately in love to… No Love Songs, inspired by the real story of co-writer Laura Wilde and her partner (and real life musician) Kyle Falconer, takes us through the ‘playlist’ of their life - and love. Spoiler alert: there are absolutely loads of love songs…

Flight cases, speakers, guitars, and mic stands create the trendy, music-filled playing space for this piece of gig-theatre - transferring to Southwark Playhouse Elephant from its acclaimed run at Edinburgh Fringe, and return to Dundee Rep Theatre. The storytelling, part spoken and part sung (beautifully), charts Lana (Anna Russell-Martin) and Jessie’s (John McLarnon) experiences with postnatal depression after the birth of their son. 

Affecting 1 in 10 parents within a year of giving birth - No Love Songs touches on an incredibly important, common and isolating condition. Soon after the birth of their son, Jessie goes off on tour to America to chase his big break, and Lana, left at home alone, starts experiencing depression, leaving her unable to sleep and afraid to leave the house. As the depression gets worse, she also has thoughts of harming herself - believing, amongst strong feelings of guilt and fear, that she is a bad mother. It’s a tricky watch, but a powerful blend of tears, honesty and music.

There are heartfelt moments too, both cheesy and romantic in good measure - giving a kind of a Daisy Jones and The Six singing duo… with Lana and Jessie singing into eachothers eyes as they first meet in a Dundee bar. Anna Russell-Martin shines, strongly switching between the highs and lows of the story, giggly, expressive and captivating as Lana. She is blunt and open, making us laugh with her dance moves and candid honesty - and boy can she sing! I’m not sure the music always works for me, but there are definitely some rocky, boppy, soulful goosebump moments that strike a chord. The lighting by Grant Anderson is also excellent - bathing the performers in light that seems almost softly magical. 

But, running at 75 minutes, I can’t help but feel that we don’t even scratch the surface of an incredibly complex mental health condition, and the significant effects that it can have on your life. The storytelling is often too broad in its narrative brushstrokes - for example, the ending is too rushed, moving too quickly creating an almost implausibly quick recovery process. I worry as well that it doesn’t delve closely or critically enough into the pressures placed onto young mothers in patriarchal, traditional family structures. I wanted to lean further into Lana’s experiences, her feelings, her writing - and instead we are too often pulled away and onwards in the story. I wanted to unpack the experiences of ‘stay at home’ parents, new parenthood, and treatment pathways - and the systems and histories that feed into them. 

Theatre can provide an excellent space to keep the conversation around mental health going, and to share real experiences - and I love that this is what Laura Wilde, Johnny McKnight (Book) and Kyle Falconer (Songs) have done. They have translated their story into something creative that will hopefully help those with experiences of ante-natel and postnatal depression feel seen and heard. And, if you’re looking for a gig-theatre stroke/ rom-com with a real story at its heart, No Love Songs might be the show for you. 

No Love Songs is running until 15 June 2024 in the Main House at Southwark Playhouse, Elephant

For tickets and information visit https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/productions/no-love-songs/

Photos by Tommy Ga-Ken Wong