If a law required you to tell your partner that you love them ten times a day, would you do it because you do actually love them, or because you have been told to do so? Would you trust your partner when they said it back? Does saying it change the way you feel about the person one way or the other?
Written and directed by Sining Gui, 10 Loves brings to life a dystopian alternate reality. One in which the government sets the rules for relationships. In this world, the law requires every married couple to spend an uninterrupted half an hour alone with each other. Additionally, they are required to say “I love you” to each other ten times a day.
Taking us through this reality is a young couple played by Moana Doll and Daniel Hintner. A constant presence in their lives is a screen monitoring their compulsory thirty minutes and counting down the ten mandatory statements of love.
As newlyweds, the wife muses that the person who came up with this “romantic” rule must surely have been in love. Soon though, as it tends to happen, life catches up. She begins to question the sincerity of the emotion behind the words. The thirty minutes go from checking in on each other to bickering about daily life. The only constant is the cold timer and its countdown.
In a standout moment, the wife uses the three words the government has forced on her – I love you – to convey all those other repressed emotions in her. Voice harsh and loud, expression furious, she repeats the words again and again, until she is spent.
Where the play sags though, is in the middle. The opening minutes pass in acclimatising to this new world of timers and counters. The happy world of a newly married couple and the romance of a night spent stargazing are charming. The last few minutes are captivating with the sudden release of emotion and what seems to be an inevitable conclusion. But in the middle, we wait. For something to happen, for something to change, for something new.
The play’s strength is the introspection it brings on the time spent in relationships and on how words lose meaning. It might even leave you with a mental screen with a timer and a countdown, at least for a few hours.
Reviewer: Savitha Venugopal
Reviewed: 6th October 2026
North West End UK Rating:
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