SHIPMATES: Christopher Ravenscroft as Professor Pawlet and Max Dowler as Frank Jefferson in People At Sea
People at Sea by JB Priestley
Salisbury Playhouse
Philip Wilson has launched his first season as artistic director at Salisbury Playhouse with a daring dramatic venture.
People At Sea, a J B Priestley play which has languished in obscurity since it was first staged in 1937, is set in the Caribbean, aboard an art deco ocean liner crippled by fire.
The vessel has been abandoned; the captain, swept overboard, is presumed drowned, and two passengers and seven members of crew are missing. A dozen people remain aboard, desperate for rescue.
Fear of storm is complemented by sinister personal undercurrents. An amazing set and an accomplished cast achieve wonders in Mr Wilson's skilful depiction of an early 1930's time warp.
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The professionalism of the entire team is key to the production's success, and offers a clue to the play's 70-year absence from the stage.
In lesser hands, it could have been dire.
Much of the dialogue is grimly moralistic. A sad, stateless individual destined to be shunted from country to country and prison to prison says: "Even after death, perhaps they will ask me for my passport all over again."
A stylish elderly lady strives to maintain normality with a game of bridge, in the spacious, desolate Verandah Cafe where most of the action unfolds.
A wealthy American industrialist discovers an unlikely flair for food preparation, a young girl senses romance, and a writer strives to complete a philosophical work on which he has laboured for five years.
Two of his lines capture the essence of the play: "They ought to be sending a museum for us, not a ship" and "I suppose we are going to be rescued, but I doubt if we're worth it."
However, this production, won warm applause as a worthy revival of a dated piece of theatre.
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