Four burly stokers, their shoulders streaked with sweat and dust, are shovelling coal against the flickering orange light of a furnace. A ship's crew battles against a raging sea, twisting and turning giant iron bulkheads as water cascades over them. One man falls and has to be borne away on the shoulders of his fellows.
This is the stunning opening to three short plays by Eugene O'Neill in the Old Vic Tunnels and I have no doubt it will prove to be one of the most remarkable London fringe theatre productions of 2012. O'Neill's Sea Plays are staged in a claustrophobic, dank, brick-lined, phantasmagoric space under Waterloo station which is one of the two most atmospheric venues in the capital (the other being Wilton's Music Hall). It's not a suitable spot for light drawingroom comedy, but it's a perfect frame for the heightened naturalism and despair of O'Neill's seafaring dramas. This is my second trip to the Tunnels, after seeing an excellent production of two early David Mamet plays in 2011. On both occasions directors and designers have fully exploited the claustrophobic nature of the space to create a breathtaking theatrical experience.
As the audience files its way through a dank corridor lined with barrels, boxes and maritime detritus, the stokers are framed under a brick archway like inhabitants of hell. I love shows that come to life before the audience have even taken their seats -- Rupert Goold's site-specific Decade about 9/11, Ian Rickson's Hamlet at the Young Vic, or the African Macbeth which Max Stafford-Clark created at Wilton's a few years ago.
O'Neill wrote these plays in 1916-17 at the start of his dramatic career; Bound East For Cardiff, the first of the trilogy, premiered in a rickety wooden theatre perched over the waves in Provincetown. A seaman lies in his bunk coughing blood, seriously injured after falling into the hold. It's the last half hour in the life of a man who knows he is going to die and end up in a watery grave. The second play, In The Zone, shows a man falling victim to the wartime paranoia of his fellows who persuade themselves that he's a German spy trying to betray their ship, crossing the Atlantic with ammunition, to the prowling U-boats. After the interval the final play, The Long Voyage Home, is set in a seedy Docklands bar where a Swedish sailor is drugged and kidnapped. The plots are linear and predictable, but the writing crackles with tension and atmosphere; O'Neill's use of popular speech sounds a bit hackneyed to us, but was revolutionary in its day.
In an ensemble production like this one with a cast of sixteen, it's hard to single out individual actors, but Matthew Trevannion makes the most of the part of an Irish sailor who is the dying man's friend and confidant. As the naive Swedish sailor, Raymond M Sage gives a memorable performance, well partnered by Amanda Boxer as the lady of the night who lures him to his doom. Kenneth Hoyt, founder and artistic director for a decade of the Provincetown Repertory Theatre, directs all three plays with great assurance. But the really outstanding work is done by the design team -- Van Santvoord (stage design), Emma Chapman (lighting) and Alex Baranowski (sound). By the end, my timbers were thoroughly shivered -- whatever that means.
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