Bon Journal

Love and marriage

The title grabbed me. It's a subject that everyone can talk about. It's not the popular TV comedy series "Love and Marriage" or the song from it. The play "Love and Marriage" by Donald Churchill and starring the sixties' pop idol Adam Faith performs its final time today at the Richmond Theatre in southwest London.

It could be subtitled "the empty next syndrome" or "the twenty year itch" or "the mid-life crisis." There are three couples, though we only see three actors. One couple believes in complete honesty. And their marriage has so far survived. Another believes in complete dishonesty, and that marriage has also survived. It's the one in between that reaches a crisis point after twenty years.

Many themes run throughout this marvelously entertaining play. "All that glitters is not gold" -- the couple most financially successful is not the happiest. "Honesty is not the best policy" - some things are too private to come out in the open. "Faithful to your wife or loyal to your friend?", does one precludes the other?

A married friend once confessed that marriage was monotonous and boring. She didn't say it as though she was referring only to her marriage, but that all marriages reached this state. Is that why married couples eventually want to have children? To overcome the monotony and boredom?

This play shows a different side. Your strategy to keep your marriage intact depends on the kind of persons you and your spouse are. If you can't stand being with each other for more than the usual communions, then you'd have to engineer your way not to. It's different strokes for different folks, as long as both parties agree on the approach. It fails when one believes in honesty and the other one doesn't.

1 February 2003 Saturday