★★½

“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.

IMPROV DEATH MATCH at the Aces and Eights

★★★★

“The comradery both on and off stage is so wholesome that despite there officially being a winner at the end of the night, it doesn’t really make much odds”

Death Match by name perhaps, but this is one of the nicest comedy nights I’ve ever witnessed.

“You’re not to worry, we won’t pick on anyone”, our compere reassures us as he encourages folk to the front row. This is pretty much the atmosphere throughout the hour-long: no audience participation excepting, of course, the traditional shouting out of subjects for the troupe to improvise, and a general sense that we’re all just lovely people having a lovely time.

The evening consists of gently jostling improv games in which the two teams- red and blue- take turns to win the crowd over, after which we’re to shout ‘red’ or ‘blue’ to determine a winner. These include a ‘Just a minute’ style storytelling, a classic tap-in scene game, and several on-the-spot song performances that are impressively catchy- “Five Green Fingers (and a thumb)” is a genuine banger, and I believe the red team was robbed of their victory on that one.

Improv is always necessarily a fairly safe space, given that it requires the performers to be so completely uninhibited and ready to look like idiots at any given moment. But this feels particularly well meaning.

Without microphones the performers are required to project over the Friday night crowd, making it feel more like a Christmas family gathering than a hardy competition: Everyone yelling out stupid suggestions, shushing each other when someone’s on stage, and the improvisers themselves often shouting encouragement to their opposing team, “That was really good, that”. The comradery both on and off stage is so wholesome that despite there officially being a winner at the end of the night, it doesn’t really make much odds.

After seven years on the go, this is, so we’re told, the longest running Camden Fringe show, and I see no reason why it shouldn’t enjoy an eighth.

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

★★½

“There are moments of excellence … 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:

Sorry we Didn’t Die at Sea

Sorry we Didn’t Die at Sea

IMPROV DEATH MATCH at the Aces and Eights

★★★★

“The comradery both on and off stage is so wholesome that despite there officially being a winner at the end of the night, it doesn’t really make much odds”

IMPROV DEATH MATCH at the Aces and Eights

Reviewed on 18th August 2023

by Miriam Sallon

More Camden Fringe 2023 Reviews:

Improv Death Match

Improv Death Match