Polar exploration is normally the stuff of movies rather than of theatre. But David Young's play does a commendable job in telling the story of six men cut off from Captain Scott's expedition to the South Pole in 1912, and marooned on Inexpressible Island. What is harder to fathom is the larger metaphorical meaning Young wishes us to draw from the play.
The Antarctic experience is filtered through the memory of Priestley, an academic geologist and the only non-naval member of the party. What emerges, apart from the obvious hardship, is a mixture of camaraderie and conflict. The men are trapped for months in severest winter with only seven weeks of rations. Lieutenant Campbell, the leader, preaches order, hymn singing and lectures to see them through. He is backed by Priestley and a doctor, Levick; but there is an antagonist, Abbott, who unavailingly tries to lead an insurrection.
Although Young declares the play to be fiction inspired by real events, it would be helpful to have more background information about the group's relationship to Scott's ill-fated party. It is also not entirely clear whether the play is a parable about class or survival. You could, in one way, see it as a belated tribute to the officer class, in that the Plato-quoting Campbell's methods ultimately see the men through. But contradicting that is the fact that the rational, Darwinian doctor is the one who comes closest to cracking up. I am not asking for messages or resolutions, simply a better indication of what drew Young to a lesser-known episode in polar exploration.
Even if the larger meaning is elusive, the play offers a detailed account of heroic survival under pressure. Above all, it is about the rituals people in hardship devise to see them through. Sometimes the rituals seem absurd, such as the invisible wall that Campbell erects between the officers and men. At other times they seem highly practical, as when the fast-disappearing rations are divided into minuscule parts, or when the nightly hymn singing is followed by the writing-up of journals. That said, it all seems an unfashionable tribute to public school virtues.
For all its problems, the play is atmospherically directed by Richard Rose and well acted by the cast of six. Mark Bazeley is all stoic stiff-upper-lippery as Campbell, Darrell D'Silva exudes feral ferocity as his working-class rival, and there is good support from Stephen Boxer as the nervy geologist. Rae Smith's design also captures the hermetic isolation of an icy Antarctic tomb. I still feel, however, that the movies are better equipped than theatre to deal with the rigours of polar exploration.
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