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A powerfully acted and darkly funny play that addresses one of the key political issues of our time.Summary
Rating
Good
As the curtain is pulled back on the small stage of PARK90 for Sorry We Didn’t Die at Sea, the audience is confronted by four actors with minimal props and sets. This sparse staging leaves the space open to be filled with four blistering performances that give a brief insight into the dangers that migrants face.
The play follows three nameless characters who are desperate enough to pay to cross the ocean in a shipping container, and the container’s thuggish owner. Confined together, personalities clash before the ship sinks and the occupants are left floating in the ocean.
Tension rises throughout the play, first in the claustrophobic interior of the vessel and then as the four struggle to survive, adrift without food or water. The four characters regress in front of us, reduced first to drinking their own urine, then to cannibalism and finally breaking down completely. All of this is powerfully brought to life through powerful performances from the entire cast (Will Bishop, Felix Garcia Guyer, Yasmine Haller and Marco Young).
This is a political work of theatre, addressing the issues of migration, safe routes, push factors (one character is fleeing for his life to Venezuela) and pull factors (one character seeks a better quality of life in a small New Zealand town). None of these issues are addressed in heavy-handed monologues, telling the audience what to think, but are approached obliquely through the characters’ back stories. These backstories are complex and contain twists that drive the plot forward. Their complexity means the play avoids falling into clichés about desirable versus undesirable migrants that news reports tend to focus on. The characters are subtly illuminated through dialogue without excessive exposition. Each character has unsympathetic elements to them, but still remains a human we can empathise with.
The grimness of a play about the pressing need to escape your country via a risky journey that goes disastrously wrong is offset by witty lines of dialogue throughout. Even in scenes that threaten to explode into violence, there are moments of humour. This balanced handling of tone in Emanuele Aldrovandi’s writing and Marco Young’s translation prevents the play becoming one note.
Other abstract moments add a sense of absurdity, as for example when the owner of the container delivers monologues on tangentially related topics; from the history of the shipping container, to shipwrecks, to whales. These are delivered with a maniacal glee by Garcia Guyer that is both unsettling and darkly funny.
A little disappointingly, the production does not have a decisive ending. The final moments deliver an ambiguous conclusion, which can work well for plays less driven by a narrative arc, but here does not pay off the tension the plot has successfully built up.
Sorry We Didn’t Die at Sea has many complex elements – detailed character development, a fast paced plot, humour, political salience and abstract monologues – that could conflict with each other but are instead well-balanced. The simple nature of the staging, stripping away all that is unnecessary, allows these parts to come together into a straightforward show that is tense, has powerful performances, addresses urgent political issues and above all leaves a lasting impression.
Written by Emanuele Aldrovandi
Translated by Marco Young
Directed by Daniel Emery
Sorry We Didn’t Die at Sea plays at The Park Theatre until 30 September. Further information and bookings can be found here.
