Goya Theatre’s new musical Actually, Love manages to find the sweet spot between being softly tender and incredibly rousing, as it pokes fun at and dismantles various rom-com tropes to show how harmful the genre has been for representations of love, identity and gender.
Should be the new blueprint for how we judge and write new rom-coms
A struggling musician, Alex (Sam Woof) helps Stevie (Jordan Broatch) prepare for an audition for a role in a rom-com. Together the pair expand and imagine what the film may be like, using Stevie’s notes to guide them, and exploring the various tropes like the ‘Gay Best Friend’, the meet-cute and the impact that rom-coms have on our lives.
This two-hander show is beautifully simple whilst communicating universal themes and encourages to reflect on our own consumption of the rom-com genre. The action is contained within one location for the most part, as Woof and Broatch lead us through the story, keeping a running commentary throughout each scene. In this way, they point out the harm within the tropes that we’re used to and have most likely internalised at some point in our lives, showing that a rom-com is more than just a bit of fun. Actually, Love follows a similar structure to a regular rom-com - the meet cute, the big fight and reconciliation - but it quickly proves that it’s so much more. This musical genuinely tries to comment on and reclaim the genre that better fits our understanding of gender and identity, and the parallels that it creates with the stereotypical rom-com directly impacts our understanding of the genre. The rom-com within the rom-com is definitely a more unhealthy portrayal of how love ought to be, whilst the story between Alex and Stevie is more indicative of how it actually is.
Woof and Broatch are an extremely talented pair, and they manage to bounce off each other’s characters, providing sources of humour and tongue-in-cheek commentary. They banter and bicker as friends do, and just in a short time we come to believe in them and their history. There’s a lot of heart and joy in their performances, and they have an uncanny ability to communicate volumes in every action or song that they do.
Actually, Love is a really whole-hearted and vulnerable show, as it takes something personal in order to create and tell such a beautiful and well-developed story in such a short space of time. This musical should be the new blueprint for how we judge and write new rom-coms.
