Cosi

Cosi shows that love is a universal human experience. Discuss. Cosi by Lewis Nowra was a play set in the 1970’s about members of the mental asylum performing a play in the backdrop of the Vietnam War. ‘Cosi Fan Tutte’ shows love as a main theme of the play. Love is the emotional connection between people or the complete admiration of something from a person or group of people. This is shown in Cosi from the perspective of Lewis towards the play of ‘Cosi Fan Tutte’ as he’s love for the play grows as the play progresses. A universal human experience is something that everyone feels or experiences at some stage in their life and love is one of these experiences. Although Lucy experiences a sense of love she seems to shut it out and consider it as unimportant to her, which Lewis agrees with at first. We see Roy’s love for the play and for Mozart, however it is evident through the play that he believe love is not entirely a universal human experience. We also see that many of the asylum patients haven’t experienced love because they are kept away from the rest of the community. The opera of ‘Cosi Fan Tutte’ which Lewis and the asylum patients are performing is based around the themes of love and fidelity. By performing the opera the characters explore their views and values about love and fidelity. This is shown through the character of Lewis as at the beginning of the play in agreement with he’s girlfriend Lucy he believe that “love is not so important nowadays”, however Lewis discovers over the course of the play that love is important, through the discovery of Nick sleeping with Lucy and also the commitment that he finds himself giving towards the opera. This shows that although love may not occur for someone in particular, it may occur for something. In many instances factors such as sport or certain hobbies can invoke feelings of love and commitment, and in this instance the opera of ‘Cosi Fan Tutte’ ended up becoming what Lewis ‘loved’. By the end of the play Lewis has discovered that ‘without love the world wouldn’t mean very much’. Lucy, Lewis’s girlfriend is a character in the play that definitely hides her feelings of love or her care for it. Lewis explains this when he says “she hates to talk about love. She things its icky,”. Lucy basically asks Lewis to choose between the opera and her, stating that the opera is unimportant. Lucy’s thought about love and its importance is shown when she sleeps with Lewis’ best friend Nick. This proves that to her “love is not so important nowadays”. Roy’s love for Mozart is evident as soon as we meet him as many of the things he says come from a Mozart play or something he said. Roy is the character that suggests ‘Cosi Fan Tutte’ to Lewis even though it would involve singing and it’s in Italian. This shows that Roy’s love for Mozart from the start slowly rubs off on Lewis as the play progresses. Back in the 1970’s people with some sort of problem were considered crazy and all thrown together in one group. This is evident in Lewis Nowra’s play of ‘Cosi’ as all asylum patients are taken from the rest of the community and restricted to an asylum ward. This leads to why a majority of the patients want to be a part of the play, as it is an opportunity to get away from it all. In the end this is what they learn to love over time although people’s views during the time almost showed that asylum patients did not deserve love at all.