I love going to a show not knowing anything about what I’m about to see. I don’t google beforehand, so I enter darkened theatres very much in the dark. It’s the name of this show that struck me like an arrow to the heart: girl, you had me at ‘declarations of love’. When I signed up to review this show, I was trying to get over a broken heart. By the time I’m sitting in the chair, I’m back in love and ready to hear a plucky actress with writing chops and energy galore wax lyrical on love, romance, and anything else really.

Yes, it’s part sketch show and part raving monologue, but Emma Maguire and Hamish Boyle have created a feminist satire show that ruminates on romances, and it is hella fun. Our girl starts out on the floor of the stage, crawling her way to a bottle of pinot gris. She’s broken-hearted and right then and there, she’s got the audience in the palm of her hands. Haven’t we all felt that familiar sting? Haven’t we all drowned our sorrows to forget about our own “Chadley Thundercocks”? The answer is a hard yes.

Emma and Hamish don’t let us wallow in the pain for too. Instead, they delight us with a hilarious dance scene, reminding me that some things are just so universal: we all think we can dance that pain away (and sometimes we can). Between moments of thinking of my own disastrous dating past, Emma has me and my bestie laughing out loud. She’s the kind of girl that writes erotic fiction about Wellington landmarks coming to life and boning people. She’s the kind of girl you want in your #squad. Yes, she actually says that thing about landmarks boning people, and yes, I snort. Her take on 50 Shades of Grey is funny, funnier still to people who have seen it (eek, not me).

The show is a series of flash skits – some land and some fall short, but that’s the risk you take when you go large. From sex bots to sexy detectives, there are some incredible lines that have the audience roaring. On the surface, you could say that this is a light dramatic work, but you’d be missing something. When Emma isn’t riffing on shit dudes say on Reddit, she stabbing you in the heart guts with illuminating lines. One great question has the dark romantic in me wanting to applaud right then and there. Let’s give her a standing O for that line. There are other gems, like her take on being an international sex symbol aka a lonely vampire who wants someone to love (don’t we all?).

Before the audience gets too glass-eyed, she and Hamish are onto the next skits: a saucy mechanic, a dancer in a band, a dude picking his nose in an elevator, the source of her love dramas, Chadley Thundercock, and a bit random seance where she’s trying to write something. Emma the writer is stuck, so she tries to channel literary ghosts. I don’t think she needs them though. She’s already got a name and a story. A story that’s worth sharing.

Take your broken hearted friends. Take your loved up mates. Take your lovers. This show IS a love story. And it’s totally for everyone.

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