Gothamist
A non-profit newsroom, powered by WNYC.
Gothamist
Listen Live
Arts & Entertainment
Theater Review: Caryl Churchill's <em>Love And Information</em>
By
John Del Signore
Published Mar 8, 2014
Modified Mar 8, 2014
Share
FacebookTwitterRedditEmail
Never miss a story
Email address
By submitting your information, you're agreeing to receive communications from New York Public Radio in accordance with our Terms .
Joan Marcus
By
John Del Signore
Published Mar 8, 2014
Modified Mar 8, 2014
Share
FacebookTwitterRedditEmail
We rely on your support to make local news available to all
Make your contribution now and help Gothamist thrive in 2026. Donate today
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
"Please tell me," a curious man begs a reluctant woman as they wait on a train platform at the top of Caryl Churchill's effervescent new play Love and Information. She possesses secret information he would desperately love to acquire, and after the usual amount of cajoling, she finally caves and whispers it into his ear. Judging by his reaction, the news is shocking, but it's what he said preceding the revelation that rings in our ears: "If there's a secret between us we're not close anymore."
Over the course of 57 scenes of varying degrees of brevity, Churchill examines our civilization's lust for information, our inability to process it, and our loss of secrecy and privacy. None of the characters in these dozens of scenes reoccur, and nobody in the 15-member ensemble plays the same person twice. But each character feels immediately familiar, and as their various scenarios accumulate, a story, of sorts, emerges. It's the story of a culture's addiction to information-on-demand, told in the short attention span format to which we've grown accustomed after a generation of channel changing and Internet surfing.
I may have made Love and Information sound heavy handed, and it's not (though at two hours it's about a half hour too long, in my opinion). Churchill, a British playwright who has spent four decades brilliantly stretching theater's boundaries with plays such as Top Girls and Far Away, is not here to condemn our Information Age, but to understand how it's changed us. "You shouldn't fire people by email," one outraged office outcast yells at his former boss, who refuses to honor his request to be terminated in person. We feel his pain, but at the same time, here we are in 2014, and it's starting to seem quaint to expect much dignity IRL.
(Joan Marcus)
Performed in a sterile white box lined like a grid, the concatenation of scenes burst into form and then vanish as quickly as a hastily closed tab, but the pacing of each one varies in a way that keeps the conceit from getting repetitive. Director James Macdonald and scenic designer Miriam Buether are both masters of the material, evoking setting and circumstance with imaginative zeal. A woman visiting an isolated cottage worries that without cell phone service or Wi-Fi she'll never know the weather forecast. "You'll find you can feel when it's raining," her host tartly advises. In another scene, an older woman appears to be packing up her deceased husband's possessions. "He must have meant everything to you," a consoling friend offers. "Maybe... We'll see," the widow replies.
Two teenage girls are sent into a frenzied panic by the realization that they don't know their favorite celebrity's favorite food. A pair of interrogators lament a prisoner's reticence, even in the face of torture. "It'll get the point where he'll say anything," one bemoans to the other, who cheerily reminds him, "We're not paid extra for it to be true!" A woman in bed can't sleep. "My head's too full of stuff!" she shouts to her husband before deciding to get up "and go on Facebook." A clown getting into costume learns that her lover has been unfaithful, and her partner clown wastes no time swooping in to fill the void.
A few of the shorter scenes have the disposable feel of cheap one-liners, like when a boozed-up Elvis impersonator blurts out his informed opinion on Israel and Palestine. But other short scenes are surprisingly affecting, and the overall tone is whimsical and sweet. A young woman rubbing sunblock on her male companion gleefully explains how sex exists solely for the exchange of genetic information. He's taken aback by her seemingly sterile view of intercourse. "You don’t think that while we’re doing it, do you?” he asks. "It doesn’t hurt to know," she says, adding, "Information and also love." The two aren't mutually exclusive, but Churchill's play makes you wonder if a surfeit of the former is making us numb to the latter.
Love and Information*continues at the Minetta Lane Theatre in Greenwich Village through April 6th.*
Tagged
caryl churchill
love and information
New York Theatre Workshop
nytw
opinionist
theater
original
John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
Read more
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
MORE arts-entertainment
A visit to Art of Play, the Brooklyn store in an animatronic bird beef with Kelly Clarkson
"Kelly Clarkson has put us in danger," says the co-owner of Art of Play.
By
Sonia Rao
Published Oct 13, 2026
The hottest way to show you're an authentic New Yorker is… riding a Citi Bike?
Thanks to Dua Lipa, Kim Kardashian, Timothée Chalamet and more, the rideshare program is having a moment.
By
Lindsay Lee Wallace
Arts & Entertainment
The hottest way to show you're an authentic New Yorker is… riding a Citi Bike?
Thanks to Dua Lipa, Kim Kardashian, Timothée Chalamet and more, the rideshare program is having a moment.
By
Lindsay Lee Wallace
Is NYC’s hottest attraction the free observation deck at 1 Centre Street?
By
James Ramsay
What happens when NYC kids take lessons in rock music? Really good bands.
By
Jayson Greene
Inside a photographer's journey to visit every neighborhood in New York City
By
Sonia Rao
Never miss a story
Catch up on the most important headlines with a roundup of essential NYC stories, delivered to your inbox daily.
Sign upEmail address
By submitting your information, you're agreeing to receive communications from New York Public Radio in accordance with our Terms .