Photo credit: Pamela Raith Photography
Dogstar
by Daisy Hall
Hampstead Theatre Downstairs, Eton Avenue, Swiss Cottage, London NW3 | until 5 December 2026.
⭐⭐⭐ Review by William Russell
“Minus Moby so not a whale of a play.”
Three whalers on a ship stuck in the ice quarrel, dream of escape, worry about what the captain is up to and suffer from starvation as stores run out and they are afflicted with scurvy. Strong performances and firm direction by Lucy Morrison make this second play by Daisy Hall well worth catching but it remains a shade too plotless for its own good. It is not so much a case of waiting for Godot as Missing Moby. Downstairs is where Hampstead puts on its most challenging new work and this one certainly deserves to be staged flaws and all. The action takes place below decks just outside the captain's cabin inside which he remains throughout having, it seems, given up any hope of rescue from the ice. Sam (Abdul Jalloh), a young whaler on his first trip, is terrified and gets even more scared when an older man, Gorey (Adam Rojko Vega) enters with a gun and pretends to shoot him. The world of the ship's crew is collapsing and there is really nothing the older whaler Babben (Justin Edwards), who tries to keep the other two under some kind of control, can do to prevent it. The performances are fine and Hall has come up with some funny if anachronistic jokes – the cursing is very 20th century – to add spice to the evening while the parallels with declining industries of today are all there to relish - or make the audience feel intelligent and perceptive. The set is splendidly cramped so that all three men crushed by it while, when the door of the captain's cabin is forced open you get a glimpse of that other world in which those who rule exist, except that the ruler seems to have gone missing presumed dead. It would just have been nice to have had a plot, to have been told a story for the evening to have had some sort of structure to it.
Cast
Justin Edwards – Barbin
Aboul Jallon – Sam
Adam Rojko Vega – Gorey
Creatives
Director – Lucy Morrison
Designer – Hannah Schmidt
Lighting Designer – Holly Ellis
Sound Designer – Anna Short
Fight Director – Bret Yount
