Theatre Review: First Love Redefines When Love Comes
Synopsis: A couple in their sixties meet and fall in love – for the first time in their lives. Through the eyes of celebrated playwright Charles Mee, First Love embraces Edith and Harold as they work their way toward one another through the accumulated baggage of their lives, wondering if they can avoid sabotaging the last chance for love they’ll ever have.
Written by Charles Mee, First Love redefines the term. We think first love is the first person we love, but what if it actually means the first time we get love right? When Harold and Edith meet a at a park, their life changes as they realize you are never too old to experience a better love for the first time.
Let us be frank! We all have a set of exes that make us wonder…… What were we thinking? Yet, for every ex that marks our heart ,a belief that eternal love or good love is not possible begins to mark us. That is what happens when Harold, played by Michael O’ Keefe, meets Angelina Fiordellisi’s Edith. By all means, the two have had their whirl-arounds with failed marriages, particularly Michael, whose series of divorces has made him feel unlovable.
O’ Keefe gives Harold a quiet fragility that shows insecurities cut your charm. Harold seems destined for the lovely Edith, of which Fiordellisi gives her a feisty, comical nature. They are a ying and yang pair that Mee’s writing and Kim Weild’s direction artfully displays. There is a lot to love about the characters’ dynamic/ actors’ chemistry like, the political jabs, the quick-witted verbosity, or the tender fear they carry at knowing love for the FIRST time when they are elders. Both seem shocked t at how vulnerable true love is, which explains their missteps. Yet, First Love switches the gender roles/ expectations of love.
While we always expect the guy to chase or beg, what I appreciated about Fiordellisi’s performance is that she makes Edith a bold, aware woman; whose “joie de vivre” charm stems from a sincere desire to be happy. While First Love may appear about two “old people” trying out love and a genuine relationship for the “first time”, the truth is that it is about two people learning to be mature enough to be joyful together. Hence, they may fight, manipulate, and even separate, but they are bound by a desire to no longer be unhappy. Thus, First Love shows that love comes when you decide to be open to happiness.
With a simple, chic set by Edward Pierce and costuming byTheresa Squire, First Love fees like a classic love story with a modernized, mindful edge thanks to Taylor Harvey’s appearance as multiple characters/ what seems to be a mystical personification of fated love. Through her brisk, dancing personas, she solidifies Edith and Harold were fated to fall in love. Moreover, that the relationships you had, though bad or mistaken, can become the lessons you need to make a good love be right for you. First Love Is playing The Cherry Lane Theatre till July 8. It is 90 minute with no intermission. Click Here To Buy Tickets. Located: 38 Commerce Street New York, NY 10014
