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Ninety-five percent of the earth’s waters remain unexplored, states the programme of ‘Sea Creatures’. And Cordelia Lynn’s new play, set in a cottage by the sea, relies and builds upon this uncharted terrain.
A peculiar family of four women live by the beach: two sisters, their mother and her partner. They are awaiting a visit from middle sibling Robin and her partner Mark for the summer. But when Mark (Tom Mothersdale) unexpectedly turns up alone, the play grows into a mystical elegy about the woman who is not there. Strangely engaging, yet entirely perplexing, ‘Sea Creatures’ sends your head spinning and leaves you grappling to know more.
Directed by James Macdonald, it is all gently paced and mythically toned. Onstage, a functioning kitchen island, dining table and outside seating set sit within walls painted in a fade from light to dark. Bridging the gap between naturalism and something otherworldly, the design, by Zoe Hurwitz is beautifully considered. As the women go about their morning duties of making coffee and buttering toast, there’s a growing air of claustrophobia, as if we are waiting for water to boil and bubble over. Over the course of the near two-hour running time, this feeling of anxious expectation never lets up.
Instead, we’re given little pieces of these women’s existence. Matriarch Shirley (played spookily by Geraldine Alexander) leads her family from a distance; there are hints of her developing alzheimer’s. Eldest, pregnant daughter George (Pearl Chanda) has a brittle edge and sometimes outwardly despises the child growing inside her. Grace Saif as the enthralling 22-year-old youngest sister Toni lives a babied life: she’s unable to chop vegetables and uncontrollably destroys things because she ‘gets scared’ but is always forgiven. There’s a suggestion that the missing Robin has depression and it has swallowed the person she once was.
But Lynn’s refusal to explain her play’s lyricism also makes it feel pretentious. There’s a stand-out scene from June Watson who walks into the women’s insular world as an outsider. She makes a perfectly pitched, almost Shakespearian speech about searching for her lost skin. But after a while, we just want a thread of clarity to cling to, to make all the melodic language make sense.
Still, I was transported by this bemusing production. The lighting designed by Jack Knowles is unsettling, but grows into an ever-present character in its own right. Waves crash, eerily, as a crossing between scenes. All of it has a sense of magic. But what’s the point of it? I’m not quite sure.