You might say “For Love,” about the tortured romantic lives of three 30-something women, is like “Sex and the City” — only the city is economically depressed Dublin, and the sex is more often unsatisfying than not. This fast, funny play is bound to strike a chord with any woman who’s ever looked for love in the wrong places, and that’s a wide pool indeed.
Our heroines are the winsome Bee (Laoisa Sexton, who’s also the playwright), who’s seeing a married artist who brings his infant child along on their dates; her full-figured friend Val (Jo Kinsella), who dreams of finding a man who’s “tall, fit and blond”; and Tina (Georgina McKevitt), whose (unseen) overweight husband sweats excessively in his sleep.
Interspersing sharp-edged dialogue and confessional monologues, the play makes clear the women’s desperation. Bee, who had a daughter when she was 14, is distraught about soon becoming a grandmother. Tina comforts herself over her loveless marriage by compulsively shopping, stubbornly trying on too-small dresses. And Val, who fancies herself “a catch . . . a total catch,” even while clutching a bucket of KFC, hasn’t had sex in a year.
“I have to keep checking the mirror to see if I’m still here,” she complains. “I’ve had it up to here with cuddles.”
Breezily directed by Tim Ruddy, “For Love” features terrific performances by the three women, especially Kinsella, who’s handed the play’s funniest lines and makes the most of them.
Providing fine support as all the male characters is John Duddy, a former pro boxer whose hunky handsomeness makes it easy to see why the women are in such a feverish state.
From its opening scene of Val’s one-night stand with a lover who falls asleep midlovemaking, to one in which she and Bee desperately search for a lost bra in a pitch-black meadow, the play hilariously shows the crazy things we do “For Love.”