Compelling Trek From the Middle of Nowhere ; Further Than the Furthest Thing (Project Space Upstairs) Verdict: Vivid and Compelling Recreation of an Alien World .....
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Summary
BLINKING like baby penguins in the pitch black auditorium, the audience listens as a vast and monstrous wave gathers from the chasms of the South Atlantic and roars over the front rows. Director Annabelle Comyn gets to the heart of the action in the first beat of Zinnie Harris's play, leaving us no choice but to be dragged by the tide to the remotest island on Earth. It is simple sensory deception, fitting for a play to which trickery is so integral. What follows is an intense first hour as universal troubles are scoured in the microcosm of Aunt Mill's (Fiona Bell) spartan kitchen. The setting is the volcanic island of Tristan da Cunha, half way between South Africa and South America. Harris's grandfather was posted there as a priest and she grew up with tales of the isolated culture where the English language is as weathered as the landscape.
The present tense suffices for all tenses and a 'h' is added before vowels such as h'eggs and h'England. With her hand-me-down knowledge, Harris winds a fictional story around the 1961 evacuation when the volcano blew its top and the islanders were evacuated to unhappy incarceration in h'England. Francis (Michael FitzGerald), regarded as an island bumpkin in South Africa, has returned to the island a greater man. He has brought with him his only friend, the industrialist Mr Hansen (Peter Gaynor), who plans to exploit the locals with a crayfish factory. Aunt Mill and husband Bill (Enda Oates) are deeply suspicious until Mill is deceived by Hansen's conjuring tricks. Before long, he is eating precious penguin eggs at the kitchen table. She feels differently. Harris should have concentrated further on the island life she builds so well in the first act and taken a scissors to the cumbersome messages about the big bad world. However, the production demonstrates how skilful casting can navigate the rockiest scripts. Accent coach Cathal Quinn captures an island cadence and the result is an illuminating characterisation from Fiona Bell. So driven were the performances that when the actors took their bow, it was startling to see not a cast of hundreds standing in lustrous island scenery, but five people and a bare stage. .See the full content of this document
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Compelling Trek From the Middle of Nowhere ; Further Than the Furthest Thing (Project Space Upstairs) Verdict: Vivid and Compelling Recreation of an Alien World .....
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