Love All

The true story of Vere St Ledger Goold, tennis champion, womaniser and bon viveur, is adapted for the stage as a topping two-hander by Tadhg Hickey and Aideen Wylde, a talented duo from Cork.

Vere’s history is as “chequered as gingham table-cloth”: a melange of Wimbledon wizardry, playing the tables (and the women) in Monte Carlo, and multiple murders. And the pair’s presentation of the history is equally mixed, combining a pleasing pastiche of vaudeville, Victorian Melodrama and the odd touch of post-modern meta-theatricality.

The play is filled with exquisitely observed details such as the jerky foreshortened swing of old-fashioned tennis matches. Hickey, as Vere, never lets his upper-crust accent slip and Wylde is equally convincing as his deadlier-than-the-male French wife, Marie Violet Giordan. As a pair they enjoy a symbiotic relationship, delivering their lines and interacting physically with pitch-perfect timing.

Some 45 of the play’s 65 minutes running time is a pacey, utterly delightful romp. However, during the last twenty minutes the meta-theatrical sections start to drag and the pair seems to be unable to draw Vere’s history to an end (an inherent danger when dealing with a real as opposed to fictional life story).

Apparently Hickey and Wylde decided to turn to theatre after not being able to find employment in a depressed Ireland. We should be thankful they couldn’t, for, if not quite a case of Love All, it is certainly one of Love-almost-All.