Amy and Sean are a typical twenty-something couple living in New York that spend many of their weekends attending their friend’s weddings. One night after returning home from a wedding in which Amy has caught the bouquet and Sean caught the garter, their drunken post-wedding conversation spirals out of control.
Sean, a writer, doesn’t believe in marriage. As he has written in his multiple columns, he appears slightly pretentious as he states that marriage is the “Santa Claus for adults” and it “hasn’t got a point”. Whereas Amy contests against this, growing up she had always expected that one day she would get married and can’t get her head around a relationship that doesn’t end in marriage. There is no doubt they are completely in love with each other as Jessica Moreno and Tom Pilutik play a highly convincing couple.
As actors their performances are strong, Moreno connects the required emotion as she pours her heart out to her boyfriend, desperately clinging on to their relationship whilst fighting her cause. The production itself is essentially a long debate between the couple, which is insightful and poses many questions about the idea of marriage. Do you need a piece of paper to prove you will be together forever? Are people only getting married for financial security?
There are dramatic peaks within the piece, I quite literally found myself rolling my eyes at the character of Sean as he spouted some awful lines such as “weddings are porn for women.” Sean is subtly arrogant as he completely disregards Amy’s feelings. The script is of good quality and despite short bursts of emotion, it is a wholly comedic piece. The dialogue is witty and bouncy, however I feel the piece itself becomes tiresome as it is dragged out for 70 minutes. Their conversation has engaging moments, but it becomes slightly bland as they begin to repeat the same points.
All Aboard The Marriage Hearse contains superb acting as they create solid moments of tension, although the show itself needs condensing into a tighter production.
*** 3 stars
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Tickets can be found here.
