Poor theatre at its best
Lynn Freeman
Shipwrecked!, directed by Peter Hambleton, Circa Two, reviewed by Lynn Freeman
WOULDN’T the world be a boring place if the truth was always clear cut?
We need people like Louis de Rougemont – a real life 19th century adventurer/self promoter who was very so very much larger than life. We also need writers like Pulitzer prize winning dramatist Donald Margulies who saw the potential in de Rougemont’s story and his storytelling, and turns it into something profound.
This whiskered Nick Blake looks like he’s just walked off a Vaudevillian stage, and I can’t help thinking de Rougemont would approve of this charming and nuanced portrayal – a beguiling blend of bluster and pathos. We follow him from his incarceration as a sickly child to his being washed up on an island after a shipwreck, to his return to “civilization” where he went from zero to hero to zero.
Darlene Mohekey is a real gem as one of de Rougemont’s able assistants. She was a wonderful talent for accents and puts it to great use here with a series of awesome portrayals of everyone from kids to pirate captains to dusky maidens. She is a gorgeous singer to boot. Jackson Coe is equally multi-gifted as actor and musician
This is “poor theatre” at its best. The lighting is a series of ordinary lamps controlled by the cast, a pile of books, a typewriter, a gramophone and some steps pretty much all the props required to tell an epic tale. Peter Hambleton puts his training at London’s Globe Theatre, and his terrific trio, to good use, using their many acting and physical attributes to good use.
Coe’s dreadlocks and Mohekey’s sublime voice give him all kinds of options to put his own stamp on Margulies’ script.
Even so, the first half (it’s around 90 minutes without a break) drags in places, particularly when de Rougemont helps two other castaways return to their aboriginal settlement. When this becomes more than “an entertainment” is when he returns to England and his story is at first embraced by the public then dissected by his critics. This is when things really get interesting and make this a piece of theatre that will lodge in your memory.
WOULDN’T the world be a boring place if the truth was always clear cut?
We need people like Louis de Rougemont – a real life 19th century adventurer/self promoter who was very so very much larger than life. We also need writers like Pulitzer prize winning dramatist Donald Margulies who saw the potential in de Rougemont’s story and his storytelling, and turns it into something profound.
This whiskered Nick Blake looks like he’s just walked off a Vaudevillian stage, and I can’t help thinking de Rougemont would approve of this charming and nuanced portrayal – a beguiling blend of bluster and pathos. We follow him from his incarceration as a sickly child to his being washed up on an island after a shipwreck, to his return to “civilization” where he went from zero to hero to zero.
Darlene Mohekey is a real gem as one of de Rougemont’s able assistants. She was a wonderful talent for accents and puts it to great use here with a series of awesome portrayals of everyone from kids to pirate captains to dusky maidens. She is a gorgeous singer to boot. Jackson Coe is equally multi-gifted as actor and musician
This is “poor theatre” at its best. The lighting is a series of ordinary lamps controlled by the cast, a pile of books, a typewriter, a gramophone and some steps pretty much all the props required to tell an epic tale. Peter Hambleton puts his training at London’s Globe Theatre, and his terrific trio, to good use, using their many acting and physical attributes to good use.
Coe’s dreadlocks and Mohekey’s sublime voice give him all kinds of options to put his own stamp on Margulies’ script.
Even so, the first half (it’s around 90 minutes without a break) drags in places, particularly when de Rougemont helps two other castaways return to their aboriginal settlement. When this becomes more than “an entertainment” is when he returns to England and his story is at first embraced by the public then dissected by his critics. This is when things really get interesting and make this a piece of theatre that will lodge in your memory.
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