SALT MEETS WOUND. To 26 May.
London
SALT MEETS WOUND
by Tom Morton-Smith
Theatre 503 Latchmere Pub 503 Battersea Park Road SW11 3BW To 26 May 2007
Tue-Sat 8pm Sun 5pm
Runs 2hr 20min One interval
TICKETS: 020 7978 7040
www.theatre503.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 20 May 2007
Dramatic riches on a less-than-golden road to Samarkand.
It’s about as practical as hoping for World Peace to expect Tom Morton-Smith’s play, imbued as it is with death, decomposition and suffering, to reach the West End. But it’s nice to think it could happen. Ranging across Europe, and back over 900 years, Morton-Smith includes in his post-Twin Towers-attack events (the main action’s set in 2002) a range of historical parallels, placing modern events within historical contexts, while considering too the different natures of contemplation and action.
Everything’s linked also to the central relationship between historian Dylan (Damian O’Hare, slightly overbearing in this small space but catching the conscientious anguish underlying initial metropolitan dismissiveness) and Nicola (Catherine Cusack perfect, a defiant drinker whose appreciative feelings only slowly show through the resentment from their past relationship).
Reluctantly Nicola accompanies her ex-lover eastwards as his translator. Both find themselves knocked off-course as their relationship unsteadily deepens. Dylan’s pursuit of Persian poet Omar Khayyam turns into a wider exploration as he encounters the results of forces that have ripped so much of Eastern Europe apart, in a journey grimly climaxing at the Aral Sea, bleak heart of 20th-century political darkness.
Along the way, Morton-Smith weaves motifs to make characters and action intensely resonant. The way a daughter holds a dying mother refracts from the Great Plague to the modern day; a leap back to AD 1082 reveals Khayyam’s poetic tribute to wine as grounded in his semi-comatose alcoholic haze. Drink has the opposite effect on him than on Nicola, while also significant is his talk with Hassan, Assassin leader of the medieval forefathers to suicide bombers.
Director Paul Robinson manages shifts of time and place with remarkably little fuss on 503’s cramped, low-tech stage (actors help cover the time needed, along with Richard Hammarton’s evocatively simple score). More crucially, Robinson orchestrates a forceful, well-paced yet tonally varied production. The play’s bordered with Nicola’s physical wounds, and there are plenty of emotional scars throughout, while the script repeatedly rubs references to salt into them.
Ambitious, complex, yet marshalling its multiple reference-points with intelligent coherence, this is a play that ought to be widely seen.
Nicola Christianson: Catherine Cusack
Bachtiar/Hassan/US Army Private/Lab Teachnician: Emilio Doorgasingh
Andrew Maitland/Alexander Burnes/Colonel Hacker/Fiodor: Matthew Douglas
Dylan Singer: Damian O’Hare
Francis Maitland/Molly Templeman/Anichka.US Army Private/Traveller/Salvager/Lab Technician: Rebecca O’Mara
Olga/Martha Templeman/Yulduz/Traveller/Salvager: Ellen Sheean
Mike/James Gerard/Lieutenant Davies/Lab Technician: Jonathan Warde
Samuel Winchester/Bailey Ritter/Omar Khayyam/US Army Private/Traveller/Salvager/Lab Technician: Sargon Yelda
Director: Paul Robinson
Designer/Costume: Max Jones
Lighting: Kevin Sleep
Sound/Music: Richard Hammarton
Assistant director: Kathryn Ind
2007-05-21 00:06:53