Jules Verne’s Extraordinary Voyages: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
The ambition of Not Cricket Productions is not insignificant, staging not one but three “extraordinary voyages” in a single enclosed space, studio seven on the upper floor of the India Buildings on Edinburgh’s Victoria Street, each of them an adapatation of one of the novels of the “grandfather of science fiction,” Monsieur Jules Verne, three of the walls draped in maps and charts to set the scene for the audience.
Adapted by Joel Bates, it is the tale of Doctor Penelope Arronax (Kate Stephenson), an expert on “the classification and habitats of sea creatures” and now a passenger on board the Abraham Lincoln and guest of Commander Farragut (Alex McLintock), yet they are seeking something hitherto unseen, a beast which dragged their sister ship the Scotia under the waves.
Racing along at twenty knots, “one might almost suspect we were running from something,” Arronax comments, to which the stern commander responds that they are not running, they are hunting. His faith is in the reserved and assured harpoonist Ned Land (Ross Telfer), a far cry from Kirk Douglas’ boisterous 1954 interpretation, but when the monster surfaces the iron hull is no protection.
Pitched into the stormy water, Arronax and Land awaken as prisoners of a crew who speak an unknown language, whose home is under the sea, whose unquestioning loyalty is to an angry man of no country and no name whom they come to know as Captain Nemo (Harry Ward, also directing) who will allow them the freedom of his vessel the Nautilus in return for their passive obedience.
Even with a whale of a tale to tell at full steam ahead, the youth of the cast works against their presence, Arronax and Nemo in particular lacking authority, he imploring when he should command, his reasonable dialogue as he offers mercy at odds with his petulant delivery, she with a bemused air of constant perplexity, detached even though she is in mortal danger thousands of fathoms below the surface and with a habit of distracting facial contortions whenever she delivers another incredulous line.
Last year Jethro Compton’s Frontier Trilogy utilised the same space to better effect in the dark and arrayed the audience on either side of the room with the action taking place in the full length of the room between rather than principally concentrated at one end, though there are moments of energy which overcome the unavoidable limitations such as the storm, the crew of the Abraham Lincoln thrown back and forth as the deck rises and falls in the surging seas before the collision plunges the stage into watery darkness.
What can be created practically is minimal and the unforgiving flat lighting of the white box set does little to enhance the illusion, though the occasional rear projection of images on the back gauze are the best moments of the production, the passing of a shark compensating for the sparse strands of static seaweed, not entirely successful but at least showing inspiration and a desire to do all they can with the space, the kraken of the dark depths perhaps lacking sufficient appendages but wrangled by Hannah Forsooth with surprising vigour.
Jules Verne’s Extraordinary Voyages: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea continues until August 29th at C Nova on Victoria Street
