“while Hodge’s plot is a little thin, his dialogue is plenty fun, giving rise to some excellent performances.”
I love a quiet story, where nothing much appears to happen, while tension and longing roil beneath the surface. The Wind and the Rain is so almost that, but unfortunately tensions are a little too tepid and nothing ever really comes to bear.
A group of 1930s medical students move into their lodgings for the new academic year. Tritton (Joe Pitts), a newcomer and awfully serious about his studies, finds himself falling for young Kiwi sculptor, Anne (Naomi Preston-Low), despite being as good as betrothed back in London.
And that’s pretty much the whole story. There’s no slow development between the love birds, barring their first meeting, so the meat of the plot happens right at the beginning. We do eventually meet Tritton’s betrothed, Jill, but despite this being a highlight, she’s such an obviously poor match, and Tritton disapproves of her behaviour so entirely, that it’s completely implausible they’ll end up together.
Director Geoffrey Beevers seems desperate to find some juicy subtext, and some of the lines are delivered so bizarrely in the opening act, I wonder if this isn’t going to become a thriller. The looks between the two long-term tenants when their new lodger arrives suggests something very foreboding indeed, and John Williams (Harvey Cole) who is generally the relief, mutters with fear, “I’m sweating”. On discussing her sympathy for newcomers learning the ropes, Mrs McFie, the po-faced landlady, ominously remarks, “There’s an awful lot you’d be better off not knowing.”
The theatre’s website mentions that this story is likely inspired by writer Merton Hodge’s own experiences “as a bisexual man in the 1930s”, which might explain Beever’s attempted angle, but there doesn’t appear to be any hint of Hodge’s bisexuality in the text itself, so instead we have these strange moments of forced tension that don’t make any sense with the actual dialogue.
That being said, while Hodge’s plot is a little thin, his dialogue is plenty fun, giving rise to some excellent performances.
Jenny Lee’s Mrs McFie is wonderfully odd, desperate to be in company, but deaf to social cues, and I feel rather sorry for her when her tenants so often interrupt her ramblings and send her off to fetch coal or dinner.
As I mentioned, the appearance of Jill, played by Helen Reuben, is a treat, bringing a taste of London glitz to the drab student lodgings. She’s presumably supposed to seem frivolous beside Tritton’s new love, earnest Anne, but Reuben makes her the fizz in the champagne, and everyone else appears dull and repressed in her presence.
Her escort, Roger, played by Lynton Appleton, is another highlight, playing a perfectly pretentious idiot and offering some much-needed silliness. Appleton later appears as a very green, awkward new student in the final scene, and while the plot’s pace has, by this point, nearly entirely dropped off, Appleton is quietly acting his socks off in the corner, despite having very few lines.
Carla Evans has designed a straight-forward, but wonderfully detailed set, complete with a buck’s head above a tiled fireplace, a kitchen crockery display cabinet and a beautiful old record player. The passing of time is denoted by the ritualistic changing of tablecloths, which seems a bit unnecessary and adds long minutes to an already long play.
There is definitely something to this story, but Beever hasn’t quite hit the nail on the head in the execution. Or perhaps, given it was written in the ‘30s, The Wind and the Rain might be more suited to a loose adaptation than a true-to-script production.
It is a slow, and sometimes difficult journey, to discover what “Salt-Water Moon’ is really about. But do not let that put you off. In this context, ‘slow’ is synonymous with ‘gently absorbing’ while ‘difficult’ can be paraphrased to mean ‘thoughtful’ or ‘intelligently imaginative’. The ambiguity is deliberate as the play may not be to everybody’s taste, but it kicks off 2023 with a blast of fresh air that wouldn’t be out of place on the ragged Newfoundland coast that is the setting for this engaging two-hander.
Set in the front porch of a coastal summer house in 1926, “Salt-Water Moon” is essentially a love story. Mary Snow (Bryony Miller) is star gazing through an eyeglass. Mim Houghton’s simple, festooned design evokes the starry, starry night, complemented by Neill Brinkworth’s lighting: a palette of blue and gray. It is not entirely clear whether Mary is expecting it, but a lilting voice – familiar to her – is heard in the distance, followed by the appearance of Jacob Mercer (Joseph Potter), Snow’s former sweetheart who abruptly left a year before to try his luck in Toronto. Mary initially resolves to remain true to her current fiancé, Jerome McKenzie, rightly betraying the hurt caused by Jacob’s desertion.
Potter plays Jacob with a permanent, cocksure grin that borders on arrogance: an arrogance that is belied by an assured, commanding and loveable performance. Potter’s natural charisma allows us to forgive the character’s sometimes dated sentiments and sentimentality. Equally, Miller rescues her character from the downtrodden path she could have taken, and we get a real sense that, whoever wins, she is quite capable of giving as good as she gets. There is a deep sense of rivalry between Mary’s unseen fiancé and Jacob, the exposition of which cleverly places the piece in the context of the first world war. Without lecturing us, the emotional and traumatic fallout that the Newfoundlanders suffered is poignantly understated, yet vividly described through David French’s dialogue.
The dialogue drives the play which, on paper, is a challenging script. Potter and Miller certainly rise to the challenge, tackling the dynamics (and the accents) with ease and skilfully playing with French’s words to strike the right levels of emotion. A talented duo, they possess the art of listening to each other and reacting. It is an intuitive and astute performance, full of realism. Peter Kavanagh directs with the same authenticity – subtle yet magical. There is a loving attention to detail that gives us the larger picture, just as the occasional silences reinforce the narrative.
Although the play ends with an unresolved outcome, we are left in little doubt as to the answer to the ‘will-they-won’t-they’ question. Nevertheless, we do leave the theatre wanting to know what happens next. This makes sense, as “Salt-Water Moon” is the third play in a quartet that features the two protagonists. Yet it has the fullness of a stand-alone piece of writing that explores the nature of love, betrayal, patriotism, loss, forgiveness and loyalty. It revisits a bygone age and harks back to a former and sometimes forgotten spirit of theatre; quietly asserting its relevance. A slow burner, but one that burns bright.
