Get on board for a witty oceanic ride

Tuesday October 31 2000

freely adapted from Ferenc Molnar’s Játék a Kastélyban (Play at the Castle)

Directed by Gary Down

Costumes by Anna Senior

Canberra Repertory Society

October 30 through November 18, 2000

Reviewed by Alanna Maclean

I don’t know what the Ferenc Molnar play that Tom Stoppard based Rough Crossing on was like, but there’s no shortage of fun in Stoppard’s version of a crazy cross-Atlantic trip by a bunch of people working on a musical.

Writers Turai (Ian Carcary) and Gal (Tony Turner) have the four-day trip to complete the script for their musical, but matters are complicated by the tangled love triangle that is their leading lady Natasha (Clara Witheridge), their leading man Ivor (Tony Magee) and their composer Adam (Simon Lissaman).

Into that mix throw the steward Dvornichek (Geoffrey Borny) who appears never to have been to sea before, and a collection of chorus girls along to rehearse.

What follows is a very tightly played series of disasters as Turai and the rather calmer Gal piece their scenario together and the cognac never quite arrives where it is supposed to.

Carcary and Turner make a good team as the writers, Witheridge and Magee appear to have caught the right 1930s ambience for the leading couple and Lissaman is particularly funny as the despairing love-torn composer. A speech disorder means Adam periodically has no lines yet we are never left in doubt as to what this character is thinking and feeling.

The scene stealing is shared by Borny’s turn as the cheerfully inept steward and Russell Brown’s Titanic of a set which is moved by scene shifters in appropriate costumes. It’s a pity, however, that the lighting and set painting are a bit on the bland side for such an up-beat show.

The ladies of the chorus certainly appear in marvellous period rehearsal gear but need to be much more confident in their singing than they were on opening night.

But the cast has a ball with a witty script that demands the audience’s attention. Stoppard is always worth watching and Rough Crossing in Rep’s hands is no exception.

First published in The Canberra Times, October 31, 2000

*Title card from the Bill Kenwright UK production.

Quotes

‘Few modern playwrights serve a fizzier champagne of verbal wit than Tom Stoppard’ - New York Times

‘Hysterical’ - Broadway World