A guilty pleasure of mine after a long day is to flip through television programs while browsing something like Facebook or Instagram, limited only by the number of screens I can assemble. Theatre Vertigo’s latest production, Caryl Churchill’s Love and Information, is a little like this: awash with windows into a variety of daily human dramas.
Cleverly staged in a minimalist theater-in-the-round style, it’s a fast-paced collection of dozens of short scenes—some lasting mere seconds—and a panoply of nameless characters, played by a cast of 12. Each scene offers entirely new context and characters. Two girls, in love with someone, sneak into his room. A man tells his dinner date in graphic detail about his work slicing up the brains of baby chicks to decipher their memories, oblivious to his companion’s discomfort. A sister reveals to her brother that she is in fact his mother. A man has taken the train to Coney Island to inform on an acquaintance.