Review: Love at Edge Theatre is ‘a quiet storm of truth, guilt and generational change’

How much can change in 20 years?

A lot, according to Love, a play from writer Bren Gosling at the Edge Theatre, Chorlton.

Love at Edge Theatre

Love sees the audience joining curmudgeonly Mac and his part doting and part put upon daughter Emily on an average morning having an average breakfast.

She makes the tea and toast while he scrolls his iPad reading the news, it just so happens that it’s the eve of the legalisation of same sex marriage in the UK.

But don’t be fooled. After Mac’s old flame Joanie arrives on the doorstep – not having been heard from for two decades – the day takes a turn, secrets come out and Mac’s cosy, sequestered life is shaken by the revelation to his family that he has a secret son, long ago disowned for being gay.

The cast delivers strongly

The cast delivers strongly on a script which is tight and doesn’t overplay its hand, preventing the dramatic exposés on stage from turning into histrionics.

Leslie Davidoff convinces as a man who thought he’d managed to outrun the past and reinvent himself as a loving father only for it all to catch up with him.

Melissa Roberts pulls off a performance as Joanie, someone who’s been plastering a smile on for so long she doesn’t seem to know anymore if it’s fake or not herself.

Eve Phillips as Emily

But it’s the interplay between Eve Phillips as Emily (also gay and Mac’s route to redemption) and Emily Wild as Jessica (Mac’s other daughter, returned from university as a born-again Christian) that really hits home.

The realism of two chalk and cheese siblings having to work out what’s best for their father anchors a rather out of the ordinary family crisis, with Phillips in particular displaying some stunning onstage charisma.

Half kitchen sink and half melodrama Love explores guilt, forgiveness and the weight of a lifetime that often hangs heavy over the dinner table.

The plot – which delivers an unsettling twist at the end – offers some delicious irony throughout with Mac suffering the consequences of coming out as a bad parent after long ago emotionally abandoning his own son.

While the play overall explores queer themes, the frankly astounding shift in societal attitudes since the 1980s and the cowardice of people who bend to social norms at the expense of their own loved ones its ultimate message is about secrets, lies and the burden to those who keep and tell them.

The profound experience of coming out for queer people is set against the insidious nature of concealing the truth and poses a general question on the nature of courage and whether – like coming out – honesty and dialogue are more generally en vogue today.

Love at Edge Theatre

Love is on at Edge Theatre, Chorlton from Wednesday 21st – Saturday 24th May 2025. 

You can get tickets by clicking here