The audience
What do you want to see?
It is a love story, from two points of view.
One lover, the man, tells the story in linear fashion.
The other, the woman, tells it in reverse.
Their versions of events differ. Sometimes, you see the same thing twice, through totally different eyes.
Because of the nature of the story, you know from the beginning that they are doomed.
You know, also, that they will fall in love, and that this love will burn brightly for a while.
It all begins with a break-up, as seen through her eyes.
Through his, it begins when a woman puts pen to paper in Golden Square.
‘I wish I’d never met you,’ the man says, in the future.
In the past, the woman begins to draw.
Which version of events is correct? She is the artist, constantly sketching and resketching things, painting people and then painting over them to try to find something closer to the truth.
He is more literal, so perhaps you should trust him.
Trust neither. Trust both. There aren’t only two sides to every story.
There are sides, and there are sides, and there are sides.
Ask the director, watching from her seat in the front row.
Ask her daughter, sitting beside her. The assembled cast and crew are watching, too, as is her producer and her agent and her editor, the make-up artist and the casting director and the grip.
And more, her brother, her sister, her brother-in-law, a therapist and an old friend, a nurse and an estate agent, a barista and a passenger who you may once have sat next to on a bus.
They are all here. They have all been watching.
And right in the middle, right next to you, he is here, too.
The man wears a black T-shirt, faded jeans.
He has dark eyebrows, a thick beard, a metal guitar pick on a chain around his neck.
He has tried his best to watch in silence, but now, as the screen fades to black, he comes undone.
He cries quietly, but he isn’t alone in this.
You wipe your eyes as one. You rise, applaud, shake the foundations.
Only one person doesn’t stand, and it’s this man, because he’s too busy staring around the room as if he’s just been woken up.
It seems to take him by surprise, to witness the applause. To see the story through your eyes.