Towards the back of the proscenium-arched stage, a wall of riveted metal panels soars darkly. Karen Tennent’s design suggests without defining the space where stories of fisherfolk will ebb and flow. Two panels part: an image showing an expanse of waves appears; wind howls, gulls cry. Actors surge forward – now, they seem water; now, they are fishermen, staring into the sea, searching for survivors – or for bodies. A change of light, an arrangement of chairs: we are in a pub, a family home, on a quayside.
Shona (Sophia McLean) is a young journalist who returns to her village to try to fill the void of her father’s disappearance by researching his life and death. Playwright Morna Young’s own father was lost at sea. Her play is a fiction that incorporates verbatim material from interviews with men and women of Scotland’s north-eastern fishing communities. Shona’s village intermediary – with a spirit-like control over time and space – is Skipper (Tam Dean Burn); weaving her story into a wider picture.
This ambitious material calls for a fluidity of staging as changeable as sea weather. The production, directed by Ian Brown, with movement direction from Jim Manganello, answers that call. The nine-strong acting ensemble merges into one; separates into vivid characters; merges again; splashes up a narrator, a new story, a family event; merges again; past and present swirl into one. Katharine Williams’s lighting combines with Pippa Murphy’s soundscapes to scud atmospheres evanescent as cloud shapes. Murphy’s music (mostly performed by actor-musician Thoren Ferguson on violin) is an almost constant, mood-modulating presence.
In family scenes, dialogue is lively (and richly demotic), but Young hasn’t quite slipped her moorings of respectful reproduction: conflicts don’t quite swell to drama. That said, this is still a tremendous production and poignant tribute to fishing communities everywhere.
• Lost at Sea tours until 24 May
