Adam Smith Theatre, Kirkcaldy, 12 February, 2008, and touring

The Iceberg presented by En Masse Theatre

AS FAR AS I know, there never was a Lord Frederick Smith representing Bethnal Green in 19th century Westminster. But everything about En Masse theatre company’s quirky show for older children suggests there was. It’s not hard to imagine such a top-hatted toff with his upper-class disdain for ordinary people, a contempt for Parliament and a romantic Victorian wanderlust. Surely there were many similar adventurers who, in the name of the British Empire, would hire a crew and set sail to the furthest corners of the earth.

The give-away in Oliver Birch’s play is that Smith aims not to suppress some tribe of natives nor to commit great acts of heroism, but to find and paint the perfect iceberg. The journey of the 85-minute play runs in parallel with the seven-month voyage of the good ship Wordsworth from Britain to the Cape of Africa, into the Indian Ocean, past Australia and south to the Antarctic.

Along the way there are challenges and set-backs, from the discovery of a mysterious stowaway to the perils of a storm, making the first sighting of icebergs on the horizon seem all the more of an achievement.

In the best storytelling tradition, Lord Smith also goes on an inner journey, growing from a selfish and self-centred prig, a man with the immaturity of a child, to an adult with the sensitivity to recognise soul as well as beauty. By the end of the play, actor Dan McGowan has gone from a loveable duffer to a character ready to take on the emotional responsibilities of fatherhood.

Meanwhile, Nadia Albina as Isobel, the mysterious stowaway, finds herself getting warmer the closer she gets to the icebergs. She is the child needing to be loved, the ice maiden who has frozen out a hostile world for her own protection. Only one man can melt her to make her human again, but will he be up to the challenge?

I suspect an audience would have responded more warmly to a telling in which Isobel was central and Smith the dark force to be reckoned with and not the other way around. It’s rather as if the story of Little Red Riding Hood was told from the perspective of the wolf. All the same, despite a couple of lulls in the narrative, director Amy Leach never loses the young audience’s attention.

Much of the credit for this goes to Tim Samuels who does a masterly job in the supporting roles, slipping from competent captain to deaf shipmate to boastful sailor with a combination of speed and oddball eccentricity. It is the combination of quirky detail and honest storytelling that gives The Iceberg its imperfect charm, making it recommended viewing for the over nines.

The Iceberg is at Eden Court Theatre, Inverness, on 13-14 February.

© Mark Fisher, 2008

Links

• En Masse Theatre
• Eden Court Theatre
• Mark Fisher’s Scottish Theatre Blog