Anna Burnside reviews a production that’s ‘trying to do something brave and challenging’ but doesn’t quite work.
Life in a Norfolk fishing community in 1770 was harsh, and Contemporary Ritual Theatre’s tale of obsession, sex and death does nothing to sugar it.
Man Billy and his mother, Widow Pruttock, scratch a living selling crabs and dabs and mending nets. She has forbidden her angry, unpredictable son from accompanying the town’s men on longer fishing trips to Scotland or Norway. He rages against this challenge to his masculinity and purpose.
Into their claustrophobic orbit comes Sheldis, a fecund free spirit who enchants Man Billy and drives a wedge between him and his miserable mother.
Writer-director Beau Hopkins uses music, movement and minimal props to create something primitive and rough. The unaccompanied music is challenging and often bawdy - these are not Nathan Evans’ sanitised sea shanties.
The performers have to commit fully - the audience at Paisley Arts Centre was close enough to smell them. To viewers used to more gloss, more humour and a sheen of irony in their musicals, this can feel like oversharing.
From their base in Great Yarmouth, Contemporary Ritual Theatre are trying to do something brave and challenging. It almost works, but this confrontational piece of work is too long and too single note to quite pull it off.
Salt was reviewed at Paisley Arts Centre September 19, 2025. It tours the UK until October 30, 2025. For further information, go to the theatre company’s website.
Photo by Peter Morgan.
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