The Voyage of The Carcass & Bobby & Amy

The Voyage of The Carcass

Brighton Little Theatre’s current offering is a double bill and very much an evening of two halves. The first being a discomforting exploration of madness, or at least that is what I brought away from the experience, and it certainly was an experience, a tale that started quietly enough, an amateur explorer, an effete and delusional American businessman, sound familiar?, if only that element had been explored. He sets sail on a self designed ship to discover the North Pole. What could go wrong? Well everything, and it does, sending the three characters spiralling into lunacy and despair.

The cast do what they can with this, but the script is so riddled with holes that they really cannot go far and what ensues is a slapstick comedy but one with very few laughs. Elements of grande guignol sit uncomfortably with  a very silly thread of a love story, a stowaway lover masquerading as a chaplain and a crew member with what we would now perhaps describe as mental health issues.

James Bennison plays explorer Bane Barrington with energy and some very deft comic timing, but there is little decline in his character as their circumstances change. Esther Dracott as Eliza is given little to do in this scantly written role but makes the most of it and she too has some excellent comic moments. Samuel Masters lopes and hunches around the stage as Izzie and is only given anything to really get his teeth into when after disappearing onto the ice he returns as Bjorn Bjornsen.

Director Jo Gatford is as hindered as her cast by this cluttered and unconvincing script by Dan O’Brien, and in taking it on commits the sin of cultural cannibalism, a play in which all involved end up eating each other.

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BOBBY & AMY

After a short interval and set change we are then, in real contrast, presented with a play so beautifully crafted, thought provoking and charming that the evening is filled with light. Emily Jenkins’ play is a complex feat of challenging multiple role playing that demands of cast and director both the lightest of touch and balance of intensity. Bobby is a thirteen year old boy, a gentle sole, an innocent child, young for his years, perhaps autistic but as such a high achiever, intelligent, thoughtful and trusting.

Amy is a bright thirteen year old dealing with the loss of her father, a mother who is clearly after only a few weeks of bereavement “moving on”. Both Bobby and Amy are victims of bullying, from their peers, a vile clutch of school girls and boys, a self obsessed father and an oppressed mother, a victim of domestic abuse.

Their rural small town life is the kid’s solace, and gradually they become friends. And that rural town is populated with characters, a farmer, a cranky old wise woman, a fish bar owner, a pharmacist, a pony riding piece of posh totty and a pompous local politician.

The cast of two, under the assured direction of Sam Chittenden, ably assisted by Faith McNeill, take on each and every one of those characters as well as the school bullies and their family members. It is an extraordinary achievement in every sense, from both director and actors and it is seamlessly delivered. There is clarity of portrayal throughout, we are never left in doubt as to who in the story is speaking. The two actors embrace playing each and every role, slipping from gender to gender without resorting to cliche and never once tripping up over the complex use of language that playwright Emily Jenkins employs, part narrative part poetry. It’s fast paced, gripping and charming.

But at the heart of this one act work one has to acknowledge that it is a gift for any young actor to be allowed to play and Izzy Boreham as Amy and Jimmy Schofield as Bobby both are more than up to the challenge. These are very fine performances indeed, well crafted, precisely delivered and in roles that show them to have realised their real potential as actors in a work that as young players as they grow older will probably never be asked to tackle again. Some of us will remember Dennis Potter’s Blue Remembered Hills, a play about childhood experiences acted out by adults. This is somewhat different as their presence is very much based on convincingly being thirteen and playing at times the adult roles.

After seeing and applauding this excellent production I was informed that due to a technical hitch there had been none of the planned projections or lighting… it mattered not a jot, in fact the sparsity of tech left we the audience free to add our own colour and focus solely on the words and those accomplished performances.

Andrew Kay

Brighton Little Theatre

28 January

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