SEVEN SCREAMS AT SEA. To 22 August.

London

SEVEN SCREAMS AT SEA
by Alejandro Casona Translated by Robert Arme

Theatro Technis To 22 August 2004
Tue-Fri 8.30pm Sat 7.30pm Sun 6pm
Runs 1hr 40min No interval

TICKETS: 020 8354 1785
Review: Timothy Ramsden 8 August

Ship of Fate ignites nightmares of guilt in an intriguing, unfamiliar drama.20th century Spanish Theatre has more than Lorca and Valle-Inclan to offer; here is a new translation of a 1952 piece from the prolific Alejandro Casona (1903-65). The Screams' are confessional, as 1st class passengers aboard a liner discover, on New Year's Eve, they are about to die. Mystically, lifeboats are for 3rd class passengers only, a feature only explicable at the plot's final twist. They, lesser criminals', celebrate, unaware of their fate.

I'm unsure how much Robert Arme has trimmed the original. There's a sense of a 3-part structure, each torrid section ending with an upbeat event a wedding, a birth and possible salvation. This last is most ambiguous, though even its predecessors are accompanied by negative, selfish attitudes, principally from the Australian-sounding oil and arms dealer Harrison, who finds money cannot buy him out of trouble.

There's an intriguing comparison with Sutton Vane's earlier 20th century ship-of-the-dead play Outward Bound For all the differences, there's a process of guilt expunged and, for some characters at least, a realisation of the need to clear consciences. Here, the sense of second chances is more in line with the J.B. Priestley of I Have Been Here Before.

It's a period piece well worth seeing, and there should be gratitude to Arme for bringing it to our attention yet another example of a Fringe company doing the kind of work that might be expected of, for example, a properly functioning national theatre.

Between translating and acting the most positive of the passengers (the only one without a scream, it seems) Arme seems stretched when it comes to direction. There's a flatness, and technical rawness to many performances, which would have benefited from more shaping. And yet the cast often make heavy weather of detail, sludging the flow of dialogue.

Still, the ensemble makes good use of the space, exploited to express characters' loves and hostilities up to the near-final cataclysm, where all, apart from Harrison, clutch some loved person. And I wouldn't complain too loudly; at least, and at last, we've been given the chance to see one of this writer's dramas.

Steward: Sebastian Aguirre
Juan de Santilla: Robert Arme
Julia Miranda: Eleanor Caird
Captain: Darren Chancey
Dr Taven: Martin Corr
Mt Harrison: Jack Lancaster
Mercedes Zabala: Kate Loustau
Baroness Nina Petrus: Camilla Mathias
Officer: Geraint Rees
Baron Adolf Petrus: Matthew Stokes
Santiage Zabala: Jackson Wright

Director: Sam Snape
Lighting: Alex Passmore

2004-08-09 00:49:40