After eight years as Artistic Director at Sheffield Theatres, Robert Hastie bids an enthusiastic audience farewell with a thrilling production of Chariots of Fire.
Adapted for the stage by frequent collaborator Mike Bartlett, this timely story takes us back to the 1924 Olympic Games when Scottish Christian evangelist Eric Liddell was in fierce competition with Jewish, English-educated Harold Abrahams for a coveted athletics title.
The 1981 film version showed athletes training on a beach, so the challenge for the creative team of this production was to simulate sequences of training and the competitive races using inventive theatrical conventions and a great deal of imagination.
The huge, wide Crucible stage is an ideal setting for the story. We see the competitors in training, on one occasion running right round the extensive theatre space, and more usually using treadmills to suggest runners in competitive races.
Much credit must go to casting director Stuart Burt who has brought together a cast of exceptionally fit actors, all of whom look as if they've recently run a marathon. Movement director Ben Wright choreographs the races so the audience can tell who is leading, who has fallen back and who is the last-minute winner.
Episodes between the physical scenes introduce a wide range of characters, notably Adam Bregman as Abrahams and Michael Wallace as Liddell, but also the women they eventually marry, Chanel Waddock as Florence and Bessy Ewa as Sybil.
The story is played out against a background of political posturing. Abrahams runs to win for himself (and all Jews), Liddell runs for his God and will not break his faith, even when put under huge pressure by dignitaries from Cambridge University, various Lords, and even the Prince of Wales, all of whom who put Country before Religion.
The production is immensely enriched by the use of music (composer and musical director Frew). Music accompanying physical action is reminiscent of the film score, rich and triumphalist. The religious debates are often followed by hymns sung by the whole cast, and short extracts from Gilbert and Sullivan operas lend a sense of period and allow Betty Ewa to display her lovely trained voice.
The pace throughout is very fast with complex set changes achieved quickly and with maximum efficiency. By the end of the first half, it seems as if every way of presenting the races has been explored, so what's next.
Here, Hastie displays the intelligence and creative ingenuity that has made him such a valued director during his time in Sheffield. In the first half, we mainly see groups of actors representing the six runners in a race. In the second half, the action increasingly focuses on the individual and we are left with a close up of Liddell honouring his God while achieving his dream.