REVIEW: LOVE YOU MORE by Sarah O’dell at Etcetera Theatre 13 - 18 May 2025

‘an evening full of nice moments and good ideas’ ★★★

It’s a sad fact that sincerity doesn’t automatically create good drama. Sarah O’dell’s heartfelt tribute to teenage fandom and her mum reaches an emotional crux that is dramatised with a performance of a poem about loss written by the playwright’s mother, and while some of her audience will receive this as a sincere attempt to recreate her mother’s warmth and love, some people (just me?) will be wincing at a not well written poem. The intention doesn’t equate with a successful moment on stage.

The whole play suffers from this – Sarah O’dell plays the girl in the story, besotted with a boy band and the subsequent solo career of a band-member, with lots of squeaky fangirl antics that segue into the grown up girl’s journalistic career and her interview with her idol a dozen years later. The transformations are achieved by sliding a power-suit jacket over band tee-shirt and baggy jeans, which does make it look a bit like a dress up fantasy of the fan-girl’s, but the speed of scene switch is well managed so that’s probably a price worth paying.

Less successful are the inserted comic interludes involving her obnoxious brother and a competition for gig tickets, which are intentionally loud and over the top but have a very different feel from the body of the play, which is trying to recreate and examine a young girl’s crushes and a mother-daughter relationship. Ms. O’dell should have the confidence to write those moments and not introduce crowd pleasing comic skits that unbalance the play.

It's an evening full of nice moments and good ideas. It doesn’t quite work. It merits attention.

LOVE YOU MORE by Sarah O’Dell

Etcetera Theatre, Camden

13 – 18 May 2025

Box Office https://www.citizenticket.com/events/etcetera-theatre/love-you-more/