The International Writers Magazine: Play Review

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AT THE INLAND SEA by Edward Bond Directed by Peter Billingham at Wiltshire Studio, Portsmouth University 23rd, 24th and 25th May, 2006 Main Cast: Dan Bird, Fern Bicheno, Michelle Johnson, Ben Noot, Beth Evans Producer : John Stanton • Chris Churcher review "At the Inland Sea" was presented by a "young but hugely enthusiastic cast of year 1 Drama Studies at the University of Portsmouth," (Peter Billingham, Director).

The play opens as a student prepares for this first day of exams, his mother cajoling him to go off for the day full of her own self-pride in her sacrifice for her son. As he drinks his early morning tea, the student comes face to face with a woman from the past, from the very history that he has been studying. He is presented with an impossible dilemma: he must tell a story which is good enough to stop horrific events from taking place. How is this possible?

The play presents a serious message in an extremely powerful way, taking the audience on an emotional journey through a representation of the terrors of the holocaust, which contrasts with the seemingly petty issues of the mother and son of the present day.

The playwright, Edward Bond, one of Britain's greatest dramatists of the modern period (Woddis, Times Educational Supplement, 1997), supported the production and attended the final night's performance. He said that it was sometimes difficult for children to come to terms with horrific, historical events, and this play was an attempt to explore that issue, and to encourage young people to come to terms with the responsibility of what we, as humans, have created in the past, and still are creating today. It was written for the Birmingham theatre in Education Company, Big Brum, and was toured to British secondary schools in the mid-nineteen nineties.

Soothsayer's production was moving, startling, at times frightening, and held the attention of the audience throughout. The set was simple but effective, using items of clothing in neat piles, spaced around the stage area to represent the belongings of those exterminated in the gas chambers; a symbolic bed became a blood-stained wall; the lighting and sound complemented the mood of the play, the sound representing the gas ovens in the extermination of the Jews was particularly haunting, and gave support to the interpretation. The costumes were simple but effective, the neutral rags of the woman, compared with the colourful clothing of the mother. The simple head- dress of the woman symbolised well the shaven heads of the people of the holocaust. A bundle of rags used to represent the baby was effective, with the 'child' being passed from person to person, or held tightly to the breast of its mother, helping to portray the total lack of worth of a human life by the Nazis towards the Jewish population during the holocaust.

Michelle Johnson played the part of the woman from Auschwitz with strength, displaying well the emotions of fear, anger and desperation to try and save her child. Jemima Philbrow was believable as the old woman, bringing humour into un-imaginable situations. Fern Bicheno was realistic as the mother, although may have improved the character by taking a little more time, as some of the dialogue was lost with the slightly rushed pace. Dan Bird as the young boy skilfully took the character through a range of mental states as he desperately tried to draw on his imagination to save the people from the past from their fate. The remaining cast was strong in their support.

The play was well directed, the characters moving in a stylised way to depict the process of death and destruction, with a range of entrances using the theatre space in an imaginative way. The Director's aim to "offer this production of 'At the Inland Sea’ as a small part of a wider, historical political, cultural and idealogical movement for revolutionising the continuing evolving of ourselves as human beings and the building of a human world based on justice, truth, and equality," has been achieved successfully in this small studio theatre in Portsmouth. The playwright was impressed with the strength of the acting, remarking that he felt the cast portrayed the vast range of emotions throughout the play with great skill, and were all "near word perfect, too!"

© Chris Churcher May 26th 2006
Chris, a mother and muature student is now in the second year of her Creative Arts Degree at the University of Portsmouth

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