‘Love, Love, Love’ examines generational affections

You may get that the title, “Love, Love, Love,” is borrowed from the Beatles’ song where it is insistently celebrated as “all we need.” But the sour intelligence in Mike Bartlett’s sharp new British comedy reports that love is really not enough, not even in triplicate. Among the other things we might need are skill, luck, timing, parents, responsibility and money, not necessarily in that order.

Nonetheless, its somewhat sour observations aside, “Love, Love, Love” is definitely a comedy. To be sure, it’s in the modern mode, which is to say it does not end in a marriage, a dance and rejuvenation, as in Shakespeare. Well, it actually does end in a dance, but there is no general atmosphere of joy. It’s too clear-eyed for that.

But it is indeed funny! Or rather, it occasions lots of

laughter. As to how much of that laughter is warmhearted or contemptuous, rueful or spiteful, different audiences (especially of different ages) will differ.

Different ages are important because “Love, Love, Love” depends on the passing of time. It takes place in three acts over 40-some years, following the self-obsessed Sandra and Kenneth from initial meeting as Oxford students on summer break, to midlife marriage problems (including two teenagers), to retirement, when those teenagers are in their 30s.

The date of Act 1 is the very day in 1967 when there was a worldwide satellite TV broadcast, with the British contribution being the Beatles singing — you guessed it — “All You Need Is Love.” The years of Acts 2 (1990) and Act 3 (2011) are in the script but not specified in the dialogue or printed in the program; still, as the play progresses, we can approximate them from the characters’ ages, mainly hapless daughter Rosie, who is 16 and then 37.

To say that this family is dysfunctional is understatement; compared to them, the family in “The Humans” over at the Public Theater is practically Norman Rockwell. Nonetheless, they fascinate — think British TV’s “Absolutely Fabulous” for comparison.

Written to be played by just four actors, “Love” demands an acting tour de force, and it gets it, with Darren Weller and Mindy Woodhead playing Kenneth and Sandra with full confidence from ages 19 to 63. They may look a little old to be 19, but they vividly convey the giddy presumption of 1967. Playing 42 is a piece of cake and 63 isn’t much harder, because the play conveys what we older folk know, that you are always yourself inside, no matter how the wrappings fade.

Which brings us to Kenneth and Sandra themselves. If my wife and I are any indication, opinions will vary, perhaps sharply. I found them self-centered in the extreme, she especially. As funny as they can be, I think their sad-sack kids have grounds to sue for parental malfeasance.

Those kids are played as teenagers and 30-somethings with consummate self-entitlement (they did learn something from their parents) by Aviana Glover and Ethan Saks. Mr. Saks also doubles as Kenneth’s older brother in Act 1.

All this is directed with assurance by Andrew Paul, KineticTheater’s founder. It’s the first American productionsince off-Broadway’s.

“Love’s” three decades comment on, compare to and contrast with each other. In the background are British politics from Harold Wilson through Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair to David Cameron. Kenneth and Sandra are surprisingly nonpolitical, but there will be some references that an American audiencewon’t get.

There’s one intermission in the two-hour show, between Acts 2 and 3. The set change between Acts 1 and 2 is carried out lickety-split, but the latter one is a lickety-split epic, well worth watching. Kudos to Johnmichael Bohach’s design, the most elaborate ever in the intimate Pittsburgh Playwrights space.

The play, as my wife puts it, is as spiky and muddy as life. But if you’re wondering whom to blame more, husband or wife, parents or kids, I think it also asks, if love is what we most need, which love is it, to love or be loved?