Lightning Beneath the Waves
David Hovatter and Company
Studio, Questors Theatre
Star rating 2.5
It’s a strong story told with muscularity. Two determined men – an engineer and a financier – set out, against near impossible odds, to lay a cable under the Atlantic Ocean to link America with Europe. Eventually they succeed, with a bit of help from Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s Great Eastern steamship thereby, in 1866, dramatically furthering the development of modern communications.
It’s a good example of non-professional actors working together to create something vibrant and interesting. Using physical theatre, mime, dance drama and rhythmic song the all-female ensemble of eight becomes navvies, shareholders, the ocean and a lot more. There are some talented performers in this company. And it sits quite well in the traverse space of Questor Theatre’s studio. The two acts are disjointed, however. For a long time after the interval it feels as if we have arrived in a different play.
The most impressive actor is Craig Nightingale, who like Marcus Boel (fine singer) also joins the ensemble. His Cyrus Field has gravitas, enthusiasm and is pretty convincing especially in his scenes with Boel’s passionate Frederick Gisbourne. In the second act we move to Britain and meet Brunel (Jerome Joseph Kennedy) himself, complete with trademark hat which becomes a symbol in this piece. Kennedy has commanding stage presence and the clearest diction in the cast but why on earth does he speak in rhyme? And it was a mistake to ask him to sing.
This show is effectively a folk musical. Robyn Backhouse, using guitar and voice, leads a pleasing four-piece band at one end of the space. She is also credited as “sound designer” which presumably subsumes the MD role. The songs are repetitively and tunefully haunting but “folksiness” should not be used as an excuse for poor choral singing which often lacks power and is frequently out of tune.
Hovatt admits in his programme note that it’s a challenge to make technical information feel dramatic and this is a brave effort. There is is, though, still too much wordy exposition mostly delivered in short bursts by ensemble members.
Moreover, the transverse space makes for audibility problems especially as several cast members are second language English speakers with strong accents. It was fortunate that I saw a captioned performance because without that I would have missed much of the text.
And finally, this show is billed at 90 minutes including interval. In fact it runs – with completely unnecessary post-curtain call extra song – 125 minutes including interval. I am a very busy reviewer and I routinely travel all over London and beyond: QED. However, it takes me two hours to get to Ealing and usually longer to get home because it’s harder to plan the connections. Inaccurate running times (33% longer than stated in this case) are not helpful. Courtesy issue?
