Give Me Your Love is a show about a man suffering from PTSD, who tries a novel method of taking MDMA to help with his therapy. The concept of the show is rather interesting, with a set that would make Irvine Welsh envious. Think stained walls and minimalist set with a cardboard box off-centre. I have to say I was rather excited when I entered the theatre. A show about MDMA and PTSD is something that I didn’t realise had been missing from my life until I read the description for this show. I was, however, incredibly disappointed.

The play, written and directed by the two actors who played three characters, felt more like a radio play. To begin with, the main character, Zach, started off in a locked room, underneath a cardboard box with cut out holes. He proceeded to stay under the box for the entirety of the piece. It started off slow. The conversations stayed between Zach talking to his wife Carol and friend Ieuan either on the phone or behind his door. It seemed no need for this play to be staged, aside from the gimmick of seeing a character start on stage underneath a box.

The gimmick soon lost its appeal as there was no physical interaction between the characters, no facial expressions and limited body movements. If it were one character who was hidden or the hidden characters slowly revealed themselves, then maybe the man in a box idea would work. The imagery of Zach being depressed and being under a box was not lost on me, but left little room for dramatic movement. There was nowhere else the play nor the character could go, except come out of the box and yet we were cheated of that ending. The whole thing felt like the makers were trying to push the boundaries of a play and see how many things they could make a man under a box do.

While the play claimed to be about PTSD and MDMA, there was very little about the manifestation of these things in a person, partly due to the fact that one of the characters was under a box the whole time.

Watching someone on a trip can be very boring. Speak to anyone who has ever been sober at a house party, watching other people get high or rather talk about being high can be yawn inducing. An exploration into whether or not the MDMA helped with how the character deals with PTSD would have been more interesting. While some of the jokes were funny, the timing was off and the repetition of gags and jokes fell flat.

All in all, the play had a lot of potential and would probably work better as a radio play. I will applaud David Woods who stayed under a cardboard box for a whole hour; it must get pretty claustrophobic.