No refugee crisis ever looked so chic, darling. Read more …
The social fabric has finally torn. Airports are closed, roads are blocked. Now even the 1% need to seek asylum. Four obscenely rich members of the elite pay through the nose to join an exclusive party on the last ship leaving London. They stay alive using the only things they know – money, sex and madness. But the ship is sailing in the wrong direction. They don’t know each other. They don’t know the Captain. They don’t know what the hell is going on.
Like a perverse Aesop’s fable for the apocalypse, the twisting plot explores how progress can sometimes be a trap. In this case it involves elegant glamour, brutal food poisoning, cyborg finance, and a delicious bull testicle meringue.
Utterly gripping from start to end, Leddy’s play is something at which to marvel.
A banker’s wife, a journalist, a singer and a civil servant secure the last boat leaving the UK in a play that never plots a course through its political ideas.
The self-reflexive device of having them 'trapped in a metaphor' for social stratification works as both distancing and funny, and the sense of both merry anarchy and pathos ensures that it works on many levels – even if the twist feels slightly forced.
Although the often farcical, status-driven quartet offer pejorative relief, we’re all guilty of the occasional loss of perspective and the play shouts this in your face – without being too vulgar of course, darling! The vulgarities appear later with the graphic sexual suggestion, vomit and excretion.
It’s a pity that Leddy’s fearless satirical force doesn’t go hand-in-hand here with a deeper exploration of the prevailing attitudes and circumstances that might make such a scenario inevitable.
The style is fierce, bursts of light and dark, and of Noel-Coward-style music and dialogue, gradually decaying into horror, as the travellers grow ill, and begin to vomit all over the once-elegant set.
It may initially feel like some darkly delicious rewriting of the drawing room comedy, but Leddy ensures that it ends up being something altogether much more serious and memorable.
International Waters, which is frivolous even when it is being serious, is unlikely to be remembered as a classic of apocalyptic art.
It runs out of steam before the end, but there is always something of interest here, even if it fails to deliver on its promise.
Tron Theatre, Glasgow from Tuesday March 22, 2016, until Saturday March 26, 2016. More info: www.tron.co.uk
Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh from Wednesday March 30, 2016, until Saturday April 2, 2016. More info: www.traverse.co.uk
Lemon Tree, Aberdeen on Tuesday April 5, 2016. More info: www.boxofficeaberdeen.com
macrobert, Stirling on Friday April 8, 2016. More info: www.macrobert.org
RSS feed of Theatre reviews