THE INLAND SEA. To 28 April.
London
THE INLAND SEA
by Naomi Wallace
Oxford Stage Company at Wilton's Music Hall To 28 April 2002
Tue-Sat 7.30 Mat Sat 2pm & Sun 4pm
Runs 2hr 35min One interval
TICKETS 020 7836 9712
Review Timothy Ramsden 13 April
A rich mix of themes and characters, if not one for easy consumption.Lurking at the end of the credits is a mystery: two dramaturgs. Between an experienced playwright and one of Britain's most notable directors of new plays, what did these two have left to do?
And did they do it well? Whatever The Inland Sea is – and it has many resonances – it's not an easy view. Rather like a less vicious Edward Bond scenario, its moments are brilliant but it's no theatrical 'page-turner', over-given to set-speeches which clog up its movement.
Yet the themes flow vast as an ocean, and there is, if not a plot, at least a number of revelations to create a theatrical shiver. Asquith Brown is famous landscape gardener Capability's younger, and apparently less capable, brother. He's in 1760s Yorkshire working on improvements to Lord Heywood's country estate, redesigning the terrain to create a picturesque landscape. And in the process evacuating a village, whose inhabitants are divided, but generally not best pleased.
It's not only here that new waters flow. Sexual liquidity is crucial when a local woman breaks into Asquith's job-obsessed life, leading to a liaison involving shapes as new and excruciating to him as his designs are to the villagers.
And the land's haunted by the ghosts of a poacher whose wife supposes him run away, and his daughter, smashed by a spade while out with her father, now seeking the gamekeeper who killed them to discover the secret of her sudden death.
Meanwhile, a trio of (excellently acted) landscape diggers fight with the locals and the military. These three are troublesome rebels, one with a taste for neologisms, another bringing from the Caribbean strange dance steps which take on new significance during the action, the third an illiterate with a strong love for books and words.
A large cast give distinguished performances, including Michael Gould's ever-mobile Asquith, arms and features veering from confidence in his work to nervous extremes with Hesp – another fine characterisation from Jo McInnes as a village woman coming to terms with new, individualised experiences – and Tricia Kelly as the mother coming to terms with long-brewed feelings of desire and desertion.
Ash Pidduck/Leafeater: Peter Bourke
Lancelot 'Capability' Brown/ Villager 1: Alan Williams
Asquith Brown: Michael Gould
Hesp Turner: Jo McInnes
Simone Faulks: Kate Duchene
Bliss: Holly Scourfield
Jayfort: Rhashan Stone
Castle: Jay Simpson
Slip: James Lance
Scarth: Michael Wilson
Nutley: William Mannering
Ellen: Tricia Kelly
Villager 2: Celia Delaney
Villager 3: Jaison Beeson
Villager 4: Jonathan Dryden Taylor
Villager 5: Matthew Rutherford
Director: Dominic Dromgoole
Designer: Robert Innes Hopkins
Lighting: Paul Anderson
Sound: Simon Whitehorn for Orbital Sound
Composert: Robert Lockhart
Movement: Charlotte Conquest
Dramaturg: Art Borreca
Assistant Dramaturg: Nancy Mayfield
2002-04-14 13:04:34