The waters are choppy in David Leddy’s apocalyptic fable, which sees a quartet of the rich and famous fight their way on to the very last boat leaving disaster as the UK goes into meltdown. Everyone’s a refugee now, trying to buy their way out, including banker’s wife Sarah Cobb (Claire Dargo), crooner Ben Spooner (Robin Laing), senior civil servant Sophia Briggs (Selina Boyack) and a celebrated journalist, Arian Martens (Lesley Hart).
After a tabletop fight to the death between Barbie dolls, as the four attempt to board the ship, we see the characters take up residence in the Caliban Room, where there’s champagne on tap. But are these four representatives of wealth, privilege and influence as lucky as they think they are to have secured their place? With wild animals roaming in the cargo area and everyone jockeying for position and asserting their own status, are they in control or all at sea? The fact that this unlovely quartet’s names are all taken from the passenger manifest of the Mary Celeste should provide a clue.
David Leddy loves to spring theatrical surprises, and this production is delivered with the style and verve we’ve come to expect. The performances are tremendous, while Becky Minto’s design – suggesting a world askew – is undeniably impressive. Nich Smith’s lighting design is beautiful – capturing, towards the end, the cold light of despair – and Danny Krass’s sound design ratchets up the tension.
But the elements never coalesce, and sometimes they merely disguise the emptiness at the heart of the piece. The reasons for society’s collapse are too shadowy, and often this feels a welter of half-digested contemporary ideas and literary references that are potentially interesting but never embedded in service to the narrative, or developed to explore how reckless consumption and an inability to change might lead to destruction.
- At the Tron, Glasgow, until 26 March. Box office: 0141-552 4267. Then touring until 8 April.
