Bristol Old Vic Theatre School’s second play, Love Song, from its showcase of four contemporary plays by this year’s graduating directors, is shown at the Alma Tavern Theatre which is the perfect intimate venue for such a piece. As the audience file in and find their seats a lone actor sits in a shabby chair on the stage, staring a bare lamp. He is Beane; a loner who’s only outside contact is with his married sister, Joan and her husband, Harry.

The set works well, split between Beane’s bare and gloomy room and Joan and Harry’s quirky flat. The play explores the relationship between the trio and later when Beane is burgled by a pretty young woman who steals the only cup he owns (but is she real or a figment of his imagination?) she too is entered into the equation. Beane’s character is Woody Allen at his most introspective with overtones of Emo Philips’s wandering falsetto as he tries to make sense of his wasted life through lack of courage to confront the real world.

Joan and Harry are lively and likeable and lift the play, with an elfin Molly as the burgling love interest. The direction proved both sympathetic to the subject (society creates outsiders as much as they create themselves) but had enough zip to prove entertaining and thought provoking as well. We enjoyed it, job done I say.

Jacquie Vowles