A heartbroken Noah Wild came across a box of his grandparents love letters in the loft aged 17, during his A Levels: “They were very dusty and hadn’t been read since first opened. Marlene’s letters, in particular, were deeply romantic and incredibly youthful – utterly beautiful to read, and framed by the fact she was only 17 years old. I watched her fall in love for the very first time.”
However there was a subtext to his grandparents marriage – Noah knows how it turned out and that Marlene had had an affair in later life.
“My uncle then sent me a stack of diaries written by my granddad and I became fascinated in the gaps that recurred through his life and how difficult it still was to form a full picture of my grandparents’ life together. Despite the letters and diaries I still knew little about their marriage.”
‘I realised I was probably experiencing love for the first time. I was an odd thing to feel after the person I loved had just rejected me’
Cue ‘With All My Fondest Love‘, Noah’s debut play as he attempts to piece together their discarded lives, through Frank Sinatra and amateur cricket to burnt letters and unspoken loss, as he entwines family history with his own messy romance during his first year at Oxford University, as he struggled with having his heart broken for the first time.
“I was struggling with all the complicated feelings that created, and realised I was probably experiencing love for the first time. I was an odd thing to feel after the person I loved had just rejected me. And looking back now, a few years later, who knows if I was in love after all – but it certainly felt like it at the time, with that all-consuming intensity that only your first experiences of romance have,” Noel explains, who now works as the Oxford University Drama Officer at Oxford Playhouse.
“So I became interested in what it means to conceive of love at a young age, how our understanding of love might change across generations and our lifetime, and developed a play about how two very different people (my grandad and me!) respond to loss, and our contrasting attempts to put ourselves together and keep on living. It’s the difficulty of accepting and coming to terms with those dual silences, which runs through the play.
“I suppose what the play also explores is how the love that held their marriage together shifted across time. It’s clear that Harold didn’t provide Marlene with the emotional support that she needed. Yet in the months before her death Harold’s diary shows so much love – the love required to care so attentively for someone, but also the love it takes to be cared for. The play uses this story, I suppose, to challenge and redefine our traditional definitions and expectations of what love is!”
‘The play uses this story, I suppose, to challenge and redefine our traditional definitions and expectations of what love is’
As for how that translates on stage, Noah, 22, says With All My Fondest Love is crafted as a monologue directed to an ex-girlfriend: “This isn’t a story about exceptional achievements or rare, notable trauma. It’s about how three generations respond to very ordinary, everyday moments of loss: the heartbreak of young love, the trauma of infidelity and the unavoidable, inevitable loss that defines every love story.
“I’m not just standing on stage delivering a story to the audience. In fact, I have the difficult job of trying my best to pretend the audience aren’t there at all but as as a young man experiencing heartbreak, rejection, anger and release.
But don’t take his word for it, because having debuted With All My Fondest Love at Oxford’s Burton Taylor Theatre, Noah then took it to Edinburgh Fringe where it received rave reviews.
‘The Fringe was exhilarating, stressful, lonely, and absolutely amazing all at once, so I can’t wait to bring the play back to Oxford’
“The Fringe was exhilarating, stressful, lonely, and absolutely amazing all at once, so I can’t wait to bring the play back to Oxford. Much of With All My Fondest Love is about the city of Oxford – how my first experience of love and romance, whilst at niversity there, were so impacted by Oxford as a city.
“Port Meadow is also a key and reoccurring location in the play, as it’s one of the only places where I feel truly calm, and the play ends with a walk down Walton Street.
“But then both me and the script have changed a lot since it first debuted in The Burton Taylor Studio, so it really feels like bringing it back home. And I love the Old Fire Station – it’s such a lovely space so I can’t wait to perform there.
With All My Fondest Love is at OFS on May 1 BOOK HERE
