Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons. Harold Pinter Theatre.

Sam Steiner’s debut two-hander Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons premiered back in 2015 and since then has enjoyed several mostly well-received festival and fringe productions. Unfortunately, something seems to have gone awry on route to the West End, because even the presence of two highly bankable and charismatic leads cannot save this mixed bag from collapsing under the weight of its improbable plot.

Musician and tediously self-serving rights activist Ollie (Aidan Turner whose performance is all hands, hands, hands, hands, hands) meets stuffy, jealous divorce lawyer Bernadette (Jenna Coleman) at a pet cemetery. For reasons that emerge later on they are there at a funeral for a cat named Dennis. The duo fall in love. But a long shadow falls over their burgeoning happiness. After a bitter debate that divides the nation and leads Ollie to throw bricks through shopwindows, the government introduces a contentious new set of regulations. The Quietude Bill, colloquially known as the Hush Law, restricts people to speaking just 140 words a day. The law presents the couple with an obvious and immediate problem. As Ollie points out there are some things “like wedding speeches, or presentations or epic poetry” that require more than 140 words. Besides which, Bernadette talks in her sleep, an unfortunate affliction which demands a hefty supply of duct tape to resolve. Absent the means to communicate in the way they ought to, can this duo’s love endure?

It is probably best not to interrogate the daft twitter-style central plot twist too closely. The origin, why, and how of the dystopian Hush Law are never really explained (intensifiers like ‘really’ being some of the first words to be ditched). Nor is it clear how the law is to be policed, what the consequences are for breaking it, or why the overly compliant pair apparently simply accept it so sedately. On a technical level, do abbreviations count as one word or two? Writing too much is banned too, but could they not just point at words in a dictionary? Whatever. The law apparently “works in Norway” so suspend disbelief we must.

In the best of the show’s few comic scenes the couple engage in a pre-law flurry of uncomfortable soul-bearing confessions. Subsequently after each day’s work they are reduced to counting out the number of words that remain to them. Annoyingly for Ollie, Bernadette often seems to save fewer words for him than he does for her. Evenings are spent with little said, but plenty of scornful eye contact, gestures, nods, and wistful sighs. As the lovers’ trust and affection for each other begin to evaporate under the burden of censorship, both external and increasingly self-imposed, each becomes happy to leave important things unsaid.

With scenes sometimes just a few seconds long, Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons darts dizzyingly back and forth over a span of many months between the couple’s optimistic early “I love you” and their darker post Hush Law life. Direct Josie Rourke injects palpable momentum here, but at times the pace feels almost breathless, frantic even. It is as if Steiner has applied the law to his own writing: keeping much that passes between the two implied and underwritten. The writing relies on actors with enough chemistry between them to make all those pleading looks and angst-ridden smiles convincing. Although Coleman is a fine, likeable actor she misfires here, seemingly unable to decide whether the character is really as much of a “cold bitch” as she says she is.  There is little feel of real emotional engagement with the permanently gesturing Turner. Frankly, it is difficult to work out how or why these two mismatched central characters would ever have fallen in love in the first place. Do we care what happens to these two? Not really.

Is Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons about anything beneath the surface? There is a hint of a political parable about the impact of oppression. Bemoaning the impact of the law on the poor, Ollie says “the powerful stay powerful because nobody’s got enough words to challenge them.” It is a polemical theme that remains maddening unexplored in the dash for rom-com style cuteness. The piece works marginally better as a comment about the way people in love try (and often fail) to communicate. Bernadette points out that “every couple has their own kind of little language” and the show is at its best charting the slow passage from coded communication to no communication in a failing relationship.

Absent much in the way of connection between the two leads there is just enough humour and pathos in Steiner’s writing to make Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons watchable. At its best it offers a welcome reminder of the power and beauty of language to bring joy. Overall, sadly, it is a bit of a lemon.

Writer: Sam Steiner

Director: Josie Rourke