Far From The Sea

Oh dear. I so wanted to be engaged with this triptych of plays by Steve Waters about Coventry, Leicester's near neighbour and the brunt of Hitler's bombardment of the Midlands. Billed as a play that 'asks what a good city might look like and how we got to where we are'. It was no such thing. It was a mish mash of unconnected pieces which were disjointed and aimless. However, in amongst this mess there were flashes of powerful writing. Such a shame they were lost amongst what passed for a plot.
The acting was faultless and equally worthy of praise was the muti purpose set; furniture and screens unfolded and revolved to furnish three different rooms. But this was all let down by the writing which rambled at times, smacked of padding in some places and occasionally made no sense at all.
The first part was a modern day Polish narrator (why?) appearing to conduct a corporate presentation in broken english almost as cringe-worthy as a David Brent seminar. Even after having watched it I have no idea what it was supposed to be about. To liven it up (?) a stooge was in the audience to heckle her. I am not a fan of ignoring the theatrical fourth wall and this failed to work, serving only to make the audience shift uncomfortably in their seats. The scene only started to make any sense when both actors belatedly clambered onto the stage and actually had a conversation. An audience, in order to engage with a production, needs to feel safe and comfortable in their seats. Leaving the house lights up and abandoning the fourth wall did completely the reverse for the first 20 minutes of this production.
Fortunately the second scene was much more theatrically conventional, lights down and all actors on the stage, and concerned the realisation that a couple's business empire was falling to pieces due to a dodgy arms deal with an Iraqi businessman in 1990. The writing, as a stand alone piece, was good enough but still failed to connect with anything else. It seemed to have no relationship to Coventry apart from highlighting that post war businesses had to diversify to survive.
The final scene, praise the lord, actually made sense in the supposed theme of the play. This was a 1950's local planning office being shown a presentation by a Polish architect (did they get extra funding from a Diversity in Arts Fund?) for the new cathedral. And we all know what a monstrosity that turned out to be!! The town planner got the chance to put his case for rebuilding the city as a functional place where people could live and Businesses could thrive. History tells us he was largely ignored!
Far from the Sea is on at Upstairs at The Western again on Friday 3rd July

First published in Western Gazette 
© Paul Towers 3/7/2014