Marriage. It’s at the centre of public debate here in
Australia. And The One is the second
of Jeffrey Jay Fowler’s shows I’ve seen with a wedding at its centre, after Fag/Stag in 2015.
Where the wedding of a high school sweetheart was the catalyst
to examining the friendship of a gay man and a straight man in Fag/Stag, this new play is about a man
and a woman and the question of whether they should get married or not.
The man has a guitar and the woman is a vocalist but they
aren’t quite accompanying each other. He’s singing songs of love and loss at
her. She’s narrating their lives and while it’s poetic, it’s not quite melodic.
Georgia King and Mark Storen play the couple and are
staggeringly good. He’s reserved and she’s fiery. He proposes casually and then
publicly and she won’t stand for either.
At the centre of Fowler’s piece is the question of “the one”
and how true that can be. She thought her last boyfriend was the one. Now she
thinks her new boyfriend is the one. Is there a contradiction here? Or is this
a concept that needs to be retired?
The One questions
marriage as an institution, especially for these two characters, but it’s
romantic in its own way. Isn’t it better we choose each other every day?
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