Tag Archives: Marco Young

Sorry We Didn't Die At Sea

Sorry we Didn’t Die at Sea

★★½

Park Theatre

SORRY WE DIDN’T DIE AT SEA at the Park Theatre

★★½

Sorry We Didn't Die At Sea

“There are moments of excellence … but in the end the story just doesn’t quite hold”

Sorry We Didn’t Die at Sea, directed by Daniel Emery, is a surreal satire about the perils of people-smuggling. Set in a near-future, Europe’s economy has collapsed and three English citizens place their trust in a human trafficker, setting off to an unknown destination in his brand-new shipping container.

While there’s the obvious social commentary – what if Europeans were the ones arriving illegally on foreign shores, desperate for help – on the whole this is more about the dynamics of an unlikely trio forced to rely on each other in order to survive.

The setting consists of a three-sided red curtain. It serves both as the walls for the shipping container and as a backdrop to the smuggler’s surreal barker-like digressions in which he educates the audience on random bits of information he’s picked up from the internet on these long, boring journeys: pasta recipes, the etymology of “empathy”, the history of the shipping container. Felix Garcia Guyer, playing the smuggler, or as he’s known in the programme, “The Burly One”, is, as with the rest of the characters, a caricature of a person. But his combination of intimidating ruffian and bizarrely well-informed lunatic brings an unknown element to the otherwise fairly plodding plot.

Marco Young’s “The Stocky One”, escaping from a serious conviction, is off-set by Will Bishop’s “The Tall One”, a clueless toff. And as the only woman on stage, Yasmine Haller is, predictably, “The Beautiful One”.

The story of human trafficking gone wrong is a major one, and it’s easy to see why writer Emanuele Aldrovandi would whittle it down to these archetypal characters, but it results in the story losing its way somewhat. It’s hard to know what we’re supposed to take away from it and on top of that, after 95 minutes straight through, the ending simply trails off.

There are moments of excellence, and the conversations around what one is willing to do to survive are genuinely brutal, but in the end the story just doesn’t quite hold.

SORRY WE DIDN’T DIE AT SEA at the Park Theatre

Reviewed on 14th September 2023

by Miriam Sallon

Photography by Charles Flint


 

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:

 

The Garden Of Words | ★★★ | August 2023
Bones | ★★★★ | July 2023
Paper Cut | ★★½ | June 2023
Leaves of Glass | ★★★★ | May 2023
The Beach House | ★★★ | February 2023
Winner’s Curse | ★★★★ | February 2023
The Elephant Song | ★★★★ | January 2023
Rumpelstiltskin | ★★★★★ | December 2022
Wickies | ★★★ | December 2022
Pickle | ★★★ | November 2022

Sorry we Didn’t Die at Sea

Sorry we Didn’t Die at Sea

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Another America

Another America

★★★

Park Theatre

Another America

Another America

Park Theatre

Reviewed – 7th April 2022

★★★

 

“For all its initial bounce, though, this show is slow to catch fire”

 

Another America by Bill Rosenfield, manages to combine two American obsessions — sport, and road trips. Inspired by Dan Austin’s film, True Fans, Rosenfield’s stage version presents us with three characters, all male, all about to take what they hope will be a life changing trip across America. The plan is to cycle from Los Angeles, on the west coast where they live, to Springfield, Massachusetts, on the east coast, to visit the Basketball Hall of Fame. Dan, the instigator of this madcap idea, is a basketball fanatic. He somehow talks his reluctant brother Jared, and his best friend Clint, into coming with him. Even the team’s failure to raise money to sponsor their trip does not derail Dan’s enthusiasm. He is sure they will manage somehow. And manage they do, though their efforts are hardly inspiring. They are constantly being rescued by the kindness of strangers on basketball courts — and in Subway sandwich shops. Which is not an uncommon American experience, if truth be told.

Another America begins on an encouraging note. Donning the naïve enthusiasm of a kind that endears all Americans to each other — and to the world for that matter — actors Jacob Lovick (Clint), Rosanna Suppa (Jared) and Marco Young (Dan) are on stage to welcome the audience from the moment they enter the studio space at the Park Theatre. This informal presentation serves the production well as the actors shift between a variety of roles, and locations. Director Joseph Winters keeps the action bouncing along on a makeshift set, much like the basketball that accompanies our fans on their road trip. Occasionally, the audience gets directly involved. The backstage crew, even when invited, are shrewd enough to decline the offer to participate.

For all its initial bounce, though, this show is slow to catch fire. Another America is a better subject for film than the theatre, for the simple reason that, unless you’ve actually been to middle America, it’s a difficult place to imagine. It’s far easier to film this vast nothingness — if your audience is ready to settle in for long periods of riding across land so flat that you can see the curvature of the earth. Looking at you, North and South Dakota. Indiana, Missouri and Pennsylvania may not be quite as prostrate, but they’re still states in “flyover country” which makes their geographical expanse hugely challenging to convey on stage. The energetic charm of the actors is not enough to paint the pictures of emptiness in words that film, unfairly, can.

For the most part, however, Across America hangs on a series of depressing encounters with people left behind and disenfranchised by an illusory American Dream. Playwright Rosenfield accurately captures the bewildered resentment of these folks. But the first half of the Another America is spent wondering why, despite some of the spectacular scenery that the cyclists travel through, most of the action is located on basketball courts, near double wide trailers, farms on the brink of foreclosure, and Subway sandwich shops in the middle of nowhere. Ironically, a detour to Las Vegas results, not in a lost 24 hours of excess, which is kind of experience we have been led to expect from any encounter in the Nevada desert, but with the team getting the hell out of there as quickly as possible. Fair enough. But this hardly makes for good drama.

Right from the start, we know there is going to be a certain amount of rite of passage material in this picaresque tale. A good example is Dan’s reckless tossing of their trip mascot, a basketball, into the Mississippi River, in a moment of existential despair. He then jumps in after it. And his brother jumps in to rescue him, and the ball. Why rescue the ball? It’s not just that it’s a basketball. It is also covered with well meaning advice from all the people who have bailed them out, at one point or another during their trip. It turns out that meeting these people is more important than even reaching the Basketball Hall of Fame, which can only offer them a free soda as acknowledgement of their epic journey. Not surprisingly, the people they meet, with little to offer, and nothing left to lose, turn out to be more generous than corporate sponsors and money making tourist attractions. It’s a sobering conclusion to what might, under different circumstances, and in a different time, be a more uplifting tale.

Another America provides a glimpse into American life that is sadly recognizable, and rather downbeat. For audiences looking for something other than gritty dramas about big city life, this may appeal. But this story is as much a myth buster about road trips and sports fanatics, as it is an inspiring tale about go-getting heroes, despite the delightful energy of its young cast.

 

 

Reviewed by Dominica Plummer

Photography by  Piers Foley

 


Another America

Park Theatre until 30th April

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:
When Darkness Falls | ★★★ | August 2021
Flushed | ★★★★ | October 2021
Abigail’s Party | ★★★★ | November 2021
Little Women | ★★★★ | November 2021
Cratchit | ★★★ | December 2021
Julie Madly Deeply | ★★★★ | December 2021

 

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