Adelaide Fringe review 2018: Love Letters to the Public Transport System

IF you’re not in love with Molly Taylor by the end of this show — or at least with her view of the hitherto unsung romantic role that public transport plays in bringing people together — you’d better check that you still have a pulse.

Molly Taylor in Love Letters to the Public Transport System.

Love Letters to the Public Transport System

Theatre

Rating: *****

The Studio, Holden Street Theatres

Until March 1

IF you’re not in love with Molly Taylor by the end of this show — or at least with her view of the hitherto unsung romantic role that public transport plays in bringing people together — you’d better check that you still have a pulse.

The playwright and actor’s lovely Liverpudlian lilt takes us on a winding personal journey through time that starts with an unhappy ending, then whisks us all the way back to a more hopeful beginning — and even her own origins — in a wonderfully clever piece of storytelling.

Intertwined with her tale of heartbreak, recovery and seemingly new-found love are the trips taken by two other unlikely pairings — that of passenger Margaret and bus driver Gavin, and fellow actor Tam Dean Burn’s real-life chance encounter with Venus as a Boy author Luke Sutherland.

It’s all tied together with Taylor’s largely futile correspondence attempts to track down and thank the various train and bus drivers who made her initial journey to happiness possible.

As is the case with so much in today’s world, she finds that while there are plenty of channels through which to lodge and voice a complaint, it proves much more difficult to actually pass on thanks and praise.

Like the very best sort of romantic comedy, these Love Letters take the audience through the full gamut of emotions, while the effervescent and animated Taylor — without ever vacating her bus seat — leaves us thoroughly transported.