‘Fool for Love’ Performance Response

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The stage performance of ‘Fool for love’ portrays two main themes: co-dependence, and love as a strong force of repulsion and desire. Co-dependence theme is evidenced where May and Eddie cannot afford to live without or with each other. The pair feels destined as a couple for their common past, as well as their mutual love, but their shaky past averts them from having some healthy relationships. The pair’s incestuous relationship as well as the unending cycle of hate and love, abandonment and reunions makes the pair miserable when either apart or together. Repulsion and desire theme is portrayed by the way Eddie repeats his father’s sins in juggling relations with Countess and May; same way the Old Man abandoned both May’s and Eddie mother by leaving them tortured and distraught by their obsessive love for him. May has feelings that same pain and anguish may rule her entire life because she is unable to totally live without Eddie, and this saddens the pair, leaving them to face their doubtful future being apart. As the play indicates however, the incest pair’s future promises additional emotional reunions as well as necessary, but painful moments of abandonment as evidenced where May hate Eddie after leaving her and equally loves him back after returning. In stage performance, lighting and sound are employed to convey distraught feelings, and violent emotions experienced by May and Eddie. As the play commences lights fade to shades of darkness, and the ‘Wake Up’ song by Merle Haggard is heard with its sound increasing gradually as lights rises; to convey the growing range between Eddie and May. The gradually increasing sounds effect appears as a motif requiring May to wake up and see the reality of Eddie’s infidelity. The designers and producers chose fading lights to portray the extent to which the pair’s argument would grow into violent outburst, and truly as the
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