Will Bishop Archives - thespyinthestalls.com

★★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.

The Prince of Homburg

The Space

Reviewed – 12th December 2019

★★★★

“The Space is an always welcoming venue which has a reputation for programming important drama. This production of The Prince of Homburg is no exception”

Kleist’s The Prince of Homburg, written around 1810, is a play shot through with ambiguity and altered states. It was also seen, at the time of its creation, as a direct challenge to the authority of the ruling classes. Now recognized as one of the masterpieces of German theatre, the play is rarely seen on British stages, and not just because of the difficulty of rendering this work into English. Neil Bartlett’s translation, however, does a fine job of capturing Kleist’s unique energy of expression and style. So what The Prince of Homburg is actually about? In many ways, the play is essentially unknowable. But on the face of it, it is a story about a soldier whose response, after being tricked into a waking dream where he is crowned with a wreath of victory, is to promptly go into battle, disobey his orders, and—win a great victory for his side.

After the battle (often the end of the story in a more conventional play) is where this drama really begins. Kleist sets the audience an intriguing puzzle: since the Prince did not know whether he was awake or dreaming when he was crowned with the victor’s wreath, can he be held responsible for disobeying orders to achieve the dream? Is his commanding officer, the Elector, really to blame, since it was he who set up the whole scene for his own amusement? This enlightened despot disingenuously argues that he must follow the law when the courts sentence Homburg to death, but then the officers in his army rebel. When the Princess Natalie, who has fallen in love with Homburg, makes an impassioned plea for her lover’s life—it is not her emotions that carry weight with the Elector, but her cleverly nuanced argument that he will look bad if he allows a man of honour to be executed for following his heart. At this point the Elector caves of course, but sets up a poison pill for Homburg. The Prince must now decide whether to make the expedient argument to save his life, or do what a man of honour would do, which is to sacrifice himself willingly for his country.

Kleist pulls off a remarkable sleight of hand with this material, managing all these reversals of fortune in a way that undercuts expectations, while paradoxically heightening the audience’s experience through the dramatization of highly ambiguous dream states. In these states, the characters confront all the big stuff like life and love; death and immortality. Coupled with crafting a language uniquely suited to these dramatic innovations, Kleist engages the our imaginations, and our sense of what is possible in the theatre. The Prince of Homburg is like Hamlet in this regard, in that the more we engage with it, the greater it becomes.

Júlia Leval, freely adapting and directing this production of The Prince of Homburg, has come up with some innovative ideas for casting and staging. The Prince is played by Lucy Mackay, a fine actress, but lacking the experience for such a difficult role. Most of the cast (recently graduated from LAMDA) also seems rather adrift in the stormy waters of Kleist’s rhetoric, though Will Bishop is a confident Elector. A pared down set designed by Zoe Brennan has some beautifully ironic touches—a small bush for the laurel tree that Homburg uses to build the wreath for example, and a small white house that stands in for palaces and churches as well as a throne. Alistair Lax’s sound design helps to heighten the dream sequences.

Don’t miss your chance to see this seldom performed masterpiece. It’s worth making the journey to The Isle of Dogs to see it, and The Space is an always welcoming venue which has a reputation for programming important drama. This production of The Prince of Homburg is no exception.

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

The Space

Reviewed – 12th December 2019

★★★★

“The Space is an always welcoming venue which has a reputation for programming important drama. This production of The Prince of Homburg is no exception”

Don’t miss your chance to see this seldom performed masterpiece. It’s worth making the journey to The Isle of Dogs to see it, and The Space is an always welcoming venue which has a reputation for programming important drama. This production of The Prince of Homburg is no exception.

Reviewed by Dominica Plummer

The Prince of Homburg

The Space until 14th December

Last ten shows reviewed at this venue: