Tedious “Love and Information” Has Nothing Substantive to Say About Either

In a 1986 New York Times think piece, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt provides a concise explanation of what literary critics call the imitative fallacy: “the error of, say, writing chaotic prose in order to convey a mood of chaos.”

If Mr. Lehmann-Haupt ever saw Caryl Churchill’s Love and Information (which is theoretically possible: the play debuted in 2012; the man died in 2018), I imagine he regarded it as a perfect reification of imitative fallacy, so haphazardly does Churchill string together a series of substanceless scenes seemingly culled at random from unrelated plays in an effort to evoke the ADHD zeitgeist of our Information Age gone TikTokally awry. Plotless, pretentious, and artistically and intellectually lazy, it’s quite possibly the very worst script I’ve ever encountered.

That, of course, is a matter of taste. Obviously, director Jessica Hanna and the other pertinent powers-that-be at California Repertory don’t think so, nor do a range of critics (including from The Guardian and the Los Angeles Times). And however much I might cry that the emperor has no clothes, let’s move on to Cal Rep’s production elements.

Alas, Hanna has done next to nothing to put some meat on Churchill’s skeletal Rorschach test. The 50+ scenes (although many are not even that) and 100+ characters (played by an all-female cast of nine, though several characters are explicitly male), which have no context to begin with (save for being parts of this nebulous whole), are further blurred together by Hanna’s choice to employ basically no costumes, sets, or props, making it that much harder on the audience to understand whether or not any scenes or characters are linked, at least beyond the fact that many contain shallow references to information of various sorts (for example, one has no dialog other than “ACT TCG AGC CCT TGA CTT GAT,” etc. — DNA trinucleotides, get it?), while a lesser number contain equally shallow references to love (“Love him so much” “love him more than you” “I’d jump out of the window” “eat fire” “cut off my hand” “eat dogshit” “kill my mother” “eat catfood” “yeuch” “just to touch him” “just to tell him” …). The lackluster lighting doesn’t help (not that it really could), and a sound cue we’ll call “one portentous note plus wind” is so redundant during the play’s last half-hour that you half-believe there’s a glitch in the audio software. 

As for the acting, as a point of comparison consider that a decade ago, under former Arts Dept. Chair Joanne Gordon’s guidance, Cal Rep casts ranged from mid-20s to middle age and were ready for any professional stage. Love and Information comes in a different era, and this notably young cast (from looks alone it’s not clear any of the nine can legally buy a beer) is, well, less developed. Maybe this is, I dunno, a good acting exercise for them? But in that vein I’d rather see them improvise on predetermined themes — even the same ones we get here — than be stuck trying to animate Churchill’s meandering dullness, because there isn’t an assemblage of actors from across the whole wide world — Meryl Streep, Viola Davis, Emma Stone, you name her — who could do anything to make me not absolutely detest this play. I mean, what could anyone do with this?

—It’s just a rash.
—But why, why a rash?
—There’s all kinds of like detergents and animals and stuff in the air. Shall we have him tested?
—He’s trying to tell us something.
—Oh come on.
—Or he’s trying not to tell us something.
—Did you get the new cream?

Yes, that’s all of it, word for word. Or how about…

—What are you looking at?
—A snail.
—Is that the same snail?
—Yes. I’ve been looking at it for a while.
—And?
—I’m just looking at it.

Or…

—Chicken tikka masala.

What makes this all doubly irritating is that, however much I hate it, I have to admit that Love and Information at least seems to be written by someone not simply stewing in the exponential infinity of data (meaningful, meaningless) that saturates us to the bone, but actively reflecting on the experience and struggling to make some sense. 

Of course, sometimes the result of struggle is failure, artistic or otherwise. In the Director’s Notes, Hanna calls Love and Information “a kaleidoscopic exploration of a world full of chaos, alienation, and nonsense” that “implores audience members to draw their own conclusions about the nature of relationships, language, technology, and the monotony of our day to day lives […].” Throwing a bunch of stuff at the wall to see what sticks ain’t much in the way of exploration, but otherwise Hanna is spot-on. Churchill is indeed imploring us to draw our own conclusions; the only thing she’s got to say is that it’s a jumble out there. 

Love and Information at California Repertory — Cal State Long Beach
Times: Thur-Sat 7:30 p.m., plus Sat 2 p.m.
The show runs through December 10.
Cost: $23-$25
Details: (562) 985-5526, csulb.edu/theatre-arts
Venue: CSULB Studio Theater, Theatre Arts Building (South Campus), Long Beach