Blue Love

Blue Love is a wry examination of the conventions and society's conditioning of love, emotion and marital throes. Hilariously entertaining, Glenn and Rhonda know only too well the failings of their union and are quite happy to subtly undermine each other for it.


Feeding the audience cans of VB, and one with much too salty popcorn, hosts Glenn (Shaun Parker) and Rhonda Flune (Veronica Neave) strike an immediate rapport with the audience well before proceedings actually begin.

Inviting all to look into and at their own relationship, the married couple are only shells of what they appear to project. Through smiles and slick '70s style garb, they look lovingly into each other's eyes, both filled with a deep chasm of loving and loathing. At once there in the moment and wishing to be as far away from each other as possible. It's a clearly subtle display of a marriage suffering under the weight of its own troubles.

Broken into three acts, more as angles for exploration than arcs of a whole, Blue Love skewers the realm of comfort to birth this strangely fascinating ride. The relaxed conversational nature of the pair shatter any allusion to possible discomfort. Yet a passive unease does exist. A short film festival that opens the night doing much to set the tone for the rest of the act.

Quite a few scenes leave the mind reeling, searching aimlessly for a quick understanding or shot at deciphering the moment. The mess strewn across the canvas is possibly nothing as it seems or just as it is. Such as a movement in the second act wherein an intensely self-absorbed Glenn sets Rhonda off, driving her to kill the act.

Act three treads the well-worn citing of song lyrics for dialogue, but manages to attack the delivery from several angles. Spitting out the lyrics, they slowly dissect and devolve them while at the same time explore the meanings and intensity behind the originals. Over and over they have the same conversation, an exercise in futility perhaps. Contesting each other with jibes from the sides, Glenn and Rhonda are clearly enjoying their attempts to undermine and undercut one another.

Utterly amazing, Glenn and Rhonda serve to interpret their relationship through the language of film, song and dance. Shaun Parker is haunting as he sings with a voice that echoes a lost soul in the firstact. During the second, they battle over a bunch of grapes in fine comedic fashion. The Flunes triumphantly sprinkle their feet as they traipse and trance along styles of dance from ballet to ballroom in the second act.

Using their own as an example, Glenn and Rhonda highlight the shaky nature, the unbounded and oft-times (un)intended fun and the scathing comradery that can exist in a marriage, or indeed any relationship. Blue Love is immensely entertaining.

Blue Love played at The Studio, Sydney Opera House, until August 7, 2005.

Soon Van

Published August 2005 at The Program - NSW Stage reviews

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