Sarah O’dell uses personal experience to craft the story of Matilda ‘Tilly’ Burton in Love You More. She’s a superfan of boyband singer Henry Steel, and we first see her as an excited teenager, passing out masks of Steel and squealing from within the audience.
But Love You More isn’t really about young crushes, although there’s a lot here to prompt smiles of recognition at our own formative years. As the narrative flips between Tilly’s teenage years and her adult career as a journalist, getting to interview Steel for television, the main centre of her universe is her mum, Rosie.
O’dell herself plays Tilly. This is her debut play, having worked in the previous decade in musical theatre and cabaret. The character she creates is likeable and believable, and her rapport with Katherine de Leiros (playing Rosie) is strong and rather touching.
Henry Steel, in the person of Dan Nash (also playing several small roles including Tilly’s brother), is a bit of a flat characterisation but representative of the identikit streaming era heartthrob (although, as Rosie says, every generation has ‘pretty boys singing above love’).
Tilly’s love for Henry and his music bonds her and her mum together, but the play strays a little from serious topics to present a game show sequence that felt out of place. I expected something more around the heartbreak of childhood fandom, but Love You More offers something rather different.
There’s a poem written by O’dell’s late mother, which is read by Tilly/Sarah at the end. It’s also printed in the programme, but I felt its inclusion undermined the play rather than allowing it to reach a powerful conclusion by itself.
O’dell is a writer who can tackle universal themes with a wry eye and a full heart. Love You More does feel a little uneven at times, but Kay Brattan’s direction allows lighting and blocking to bring intimacy into this tiny theatre, even if her sound design allows effects to be slightly overused to suggest tension or catastrophe.
I’m giving this 3 stars.
Love You More is at Etcetera Theatre until 18 May. Details here.
Image credit: Rhiannon Noble