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The Sea

Haymarket, Theatre Royal, West End
From: Thursday, 17th January 2008
To: Saturday, 19 April 2008

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Synopsis

This biting dark comedy takes place in 1907 in a small, seaside village on the East Anglian Coast. The world of the village is harsh, a place where the weak are destroyed by the strong and the strong abuse their power. Mrs Rafi, the bullying matriarch, and her clique of simpering ladies trample on everyone's feelings. Mr Hatch, a sad, unhinged little man is paranoid about visitors from outer space stealing the brains from people's heads and replacing them with machinery! They are enemies, fighting against one another and each other's idiosyncratic allies. The Sea was first performed at the Royal Court Theatre in May 1973.

Our Review:

24 January 2008

�Has anything been worthwhile?� asks Eileen Atkins as Mrs Rafi towards the end of this over-complicated revival of Edward Bond�s The Sea. The question comes in the course of a great melancholic speech, and Dame Eileen delivers it magnificently, her face etched in fear and sorrow; but it hardly pays its way from the play that precedes it.

Bond�s 1973 play � which I first saw at the Royal Court Theatre Downstairs on the same fateful night as the midnight premiere of The Rocky Horror Show in the Theatre Upstairs � is a superb set of scenes of Edwardian anxieties in a small East Anglian coastal village, combining epic scale, farce and high comedy. But there is not much story. A boy has been drowned. His fianc�e Rose Jones (Mariah Gale) comes to an agreement with his best friend Willy Carson (Harry Lloyd).

An optimistic conclusion is still clouded by premonitions of disaster. The nearby army guns boom out at unexpected moments. Down by the shore, ...

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Latest User Review

Quentin - 5 April 2008:

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. Really not surprised at all that it's closing early and I fully endorse the WOS review....

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