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Nick Curtis's rating
Comedy? You must be joking
By
Nick Curtis
7 Feb 2008
It's a belief commonly held but little acted upon in British theatre that Edward Bond is this country's great lost playwright. The Haymarket's artistic director-for-a-year Jonathan Kent has at least put his money where his mouth is with a revival of The Sea, unconvincingly and unalluringly described as this fiercely bleak writer's "only comedy". Critics fell on it as proof of Bond's neglected genius. I'm not so sure.
The Sea gives Eileen Atkins a chance to flex her beady-eyed hauteur as Edwardian matriarch Mrs Rafi, and gives set designer Paul Brown a chance to show off, but it doesn't do Bond's reputation any favours. It's uneven in tone, its narrative is broken-backed, it staggers on after at least two false endings and its prevailing tone is one of unbridled hysteria - the clinical rather than the raucous kind. Atkins aside, it's not particularly funny.
It seems at first to be a critique of British insularity as Mrs Rafi and her retinue of cowed ladies bumble through empty social rituals while the frantically demented local draper Hatch (David Haig) persuades the local coastguard not to save drowning men, convinced they are invading space aliens. But then Carson (Harry Lloyd), the young man who survives a shipwreck, acts like a very alien automaton, before embarking on a debate which seems to confirm the universe as a hostile killing ground. Finally there's a bizarre and contradictory insistence that there must always be hope - that after the rats, there is always a rat-catcher - before Carson almost elopes with his dead friend's intended.
The Sea is worth seeing for Atkins, but then her character is the only one that pursues a coherent course through the play. The rest feels like Bond covering a rather aimless meander through his own misanthropy with an uneasy comic veneer.
And there's the rub. A revival of Bond's Saved, or his Lear, might have made a better case for a reappraisal of his reputation, but both would die a death in the Haymarket, whereas The Sea can be sold to West End audiences as a "comedy" with fancy frocks and nice sets. Wrong play, wrong theatre, or both?
• The Sea is at the Theatre Royal Haymarket until 19 April. Box office: 0844 844 2353.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
Reader views (2)
Deeply pretentious, unmoving and unfunny. David Haid goes OTT, and only Eileen Atkins redeems it in the acting stakes. The two "comedy" set pieces: the rehearsal and the funeral sequences fall flat as a pancake and would shame an am dram production. Duck-faced Harry Lloyd is under-whelming and it's no surprise at all that this is closing early.
- Quentin Gee, London, 08/04/2008 11:33
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My husband and I were just in London where we completely enjoyed "The Sea". We were fortunate to acquire opening night seats and went back to New York with a renewed love of theatre. Not entirely familiar with Mr. Bond as a playwright, we were surprised at the timelessness of his work. Please tell me the lives we witnessed don't go on today in many ways, shapes and forms. A very eye opening experience for all.
- Georgina Phillips, New York, USA, 12/02/2008 15:22
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