ANTARCTICA by David Young. Savoy Theatre.

London

ANTARCTICA
by David Young

Savoy Theatre
Runs 2hr 35min One interval

TICKETS 020 7836 8888
Review Timothy Ramsden 10 October 2001

World's end whiz of ideas tumble out of the ice-cave where fictional explorers shelter. Here is a serious play by a non-star author with no obvious above-the-title cast names. It's a genuine, if imperfect, attempt to detonate a range of ideas through the enforced confinement of contrasting personalities.

Lieutenant Campbell and his five companions are a fictional group separated from other members of the 1911/12 Scott expedition to the South Pole. With diminishing rations and no sign of rescue they shelter from ear-piercing winds (sound design: Christopher Shutt) in an ice cave, designed by Rae Smith as a giant whorl-patterned slab.

At first the cave solidly defends them; later its sides disappear, mirroring the men's minds cracking yet simultaneously expanding to consider their place in the long history of human transience

Punctuating this are brief scenes, lit in warmer hues by Bruno Poet, where Priestley, a geologist accompanying the expedition, and Dickason, one of the ratings, meet to reminisce as sirens warn of an air-raid. 'It hasn't been a good century,' comments Eddie Marsan's ever-reliable Dickason to Priestley, whose non-service position is reflected in Stephen Boxer's light-hued voice.

Conflict soon develops between Mark Bazeley's clipped-tone, officer-class Campbell, believing in gun-room discipline – several hours stood in the biting wind for troublemakers - and Darrell D' Silva's resentful Abbott, for whom the rule of law means more and more going to fewer and fewer.

But it's a fellow-officer, the ever-conciliatory doctor Levick (Ronan Vibert), who causes Campbell most acute anxiety. Levick's lecture (moral improvement for polar evenings) on Darwinism explains survival of the fittest. Campbell realises the idea threatens the class system, which for him is the natural order.

Young relies too much on monologue memories and diary entries and his ideas are not always structured clearly. But ideas there are, and director Richard Rose creates a strong sense of men at the world's extremity approaching the end of their varying tethers.

Campbell: Mark Bazeley
Priestley: Stephen Boxer
Abbott: Darrell D'Silva
Browning: Jason Fleming
Dickason: Eddie Marsan
Levick: Ronan Vibert

Director: Richard Rose
Designer: Rae Smith
Lighting: Bruno Poet
Sound: Christopher Shutt

2001-10-11 01:40:21