This is the second touring production for new artistic director Jake Smith, and he has once again decided to move away from Eastern Angles’ traditional local roots, this time branching out to Iceland with a play about a fishing community and one young man’s struggle with the terrors of ‘the deep’.
In some ways, there is nothing original in Jón Atli Jónasson’s play—there have been many tales from Moby Dick onwards about man’s love / hate relationship with the vast unknowns of the ocean. The need to explore its wonders and work in its teeming waters, juxtaposed with its unpredictability and challenging climate, are as old as time itself.
But this one is based on a true story, and, moreover, brings us into the present day, with a monologue performed with absorbing physicality by trained ballet dancer / actor Jonathon Savage.
The play follows the story of a young, unnamed fisherman who wakes at 4AM to join his boat for a working trip to fish for cod. We follow him through his routine of getting up in his parents' house, trying not to wake them as he gathers his belongings, walking down to the harbour and meeting the other crew. He has done this many times before—it's routine and seems like a normal day. But in the freezing waters off Iceland, while he is dozing in his cabin, a sudden storm causes the ship to capsize and sink with all hands lost apart from him.
Thus begins the story of his struggle for survival as he endures the numbing cold, swims onwards towards an unknown horizon and talks to a bird overhead. As he is tossed about by the wind and the waves all alone in the vastness of the ocean, he thinks of his girl left back at home, imagines how he will ask her out for a drive in his new car and keeps himself awake thinking of his favourite rock albums.
The compact set is a screened backdrop of moving images and a curved platform with ladders that doubles as the ship and then the waves as he fights to survive the elements. The production is absorbing, the physicality of Savage’s movements coupled with a hypnotic soundscape and atmospheric lighting creating a performance that is both emotional and unsettling as we struggle to survive with him.
The sudden emergence of a live choir at the end, springing up within the audience, was slightly bizarre given that the rest of the music was recorded. Also, it would have been better if they had been more visible—maybe walking down the sides of the auditorium.
But that is a small negative. At only an hour, this is a performance well worth the experience—and given we too are an island nation and East Anglia is coastal, and we did have trading links to Iceland for many years, the empathy for us with the sea and its terrifying consequences are equally compelling.