Licketyspit, Traverse, Edinburgh, and touring 2006

Licketyspit's Green Whale

OUR RELATIONSHIP with the natural world is a confused one. If we heard, for example, that there was a green whale spraying majestic plumes of water in the Atlantic, would we, like Johnny Austin’s sailor in Virginia Radcliffe’s children’s play, dream of catching it and making a million from the carcass?

Or would we, like Itxaso Moreno’s character, Baletxo, think of it as a thing of beauty that could offer sanctuary and a means to escape?

Most probably, like the three youngsters in ‘Green Whale’, we’d find ourselves somewhere between the two, excited by the quest and awed by the sight of the prey.

Thus it is that, having set sail from Edinburgh in the ‘Big Betty’, hoping to bring home some money for their impoverished mother, they brave treacherous seas only to have second thoughts when the magnificent beast comes into view.

The real reward the crew comes home with – symbolised by a diamond bequeathed to them by the captain – is a more rounded understanding of nature.

The vessel that gets them there, in Georgia McGuinness’s imposing set for Licketyspit, is a wooden sailing boat from which billowing sheets tumble to create the raging seas and the green whale itself.

As Baletxo, the mysterious child of the sea, Moreno hides herself behind the mainsail or beneath the deck, while the others produce guitars, cowbells and a squeezebox for their songs and special effects.

The performances are energised, and Radcliffe’s stage pictures are striking – most notably when a wall of bubbles cascades from the ceiling as the children come under the protection of the whale – but there are two weaknesses in Radcliffe’s script that could do with being ironed out.

The first is the way Baletxo is introduced to us with an elliptical poem instead of a clear explanation of who she is, who she’s hiding from and what she’s doing on the boat. The reactions of the young audience indicates their confusion in the early part of the play.

The second is that the story is interrupted less by genuine complications on the Atlantic voyage than by extraneous flashbacks and songs.

When we’re desperate to encounter the whale, we’d accept any number of plot twists making the journey harder, but two scenes explaining the captain’s relationship with the Queen of Spain seem irrelevant. They delay the action without heightening the drama.

The result is a polished and engaging production that doesn’t quite fulfil its narrative potential.

(See Licketyspit website for touring dates in January and February).

© Mark Fisher, 2006

Links

• Licketyspit