<b>THE SEA</b> Court House Theatre/Shaw Festival SpeakupWNY | Buffalo NY and Buffalo News

Shaw Festival
Through October 12
THE SEA Court House Theatre/Shaw Festival

By Augustine Warner

Edward Bond’s “The Sea” is an amazing mix of science fiction, social criticism and madness.
It’s set in those last, gloriously sunny days of 1907 Edwardian England.
Only the new Army firing range on the edge of this small village on the coast of Eastern England is a hint of the storm which will soon change the country and its social classes forever.
The play opens with a storm with the coast watcher, the drunken draper Hatch (Patrick Galligan), ignoring calls for help.
Everything falls from there.
The subservient draper in his shop is actually crazy.
He leads a little band of acolytes convinced the missing man is actually a harbinger of an assault from space.
As Peter Millard’s Evens shows later in the play, there are others who agree, but not irrationally.
After all, this was the time of Jules Verne and others beginning science fiction, the sense that others live among some of the vast throng of stars as we live around our own.
In the England of 1907, Hatch has to function in a village controlled by “the quality,” Louise Rafi (Fiona Reid), and the church, the Vicar (Neil Barclay).
Mrs. Rafi swirls through town from her perch at Park House, trailed by her companion, Jessica Tilehouse (Patty Jamieson).
Mrs. Rafi’s niece, Rose Jones (Julia Course) is engaged to the missing sailor and is broken by his apparent death, although there is healing.
Since Bond wrote in the early 70s about 1907, I’m not sure he’s all that accurate about the attitude on death at a time when medicine was limited in what it could do about sickness and disease.
People of all ages died from a lot of things and there was limited knowledge of how to stop it.
This death could have been avoided, but Rose’s fiancée was anxious to see her.
So, he grabbed his friend Willy Carson (Wade Bogert-O’Brien) for a trip through those stormy seas in a small boat.
It went badly and Carson has trouble blaming himself for not stopping the trip.
This is the stereotypical small town where everyone knows (almost) everything about everyone else.
Everyone knows Hatch is crazy, while he knows Mrs. Rafi is an extremely difficult customer whose eccentricities could drive him out of business but in a small village he needs the custom of the grandee.
She’s known to the village for her summer pageants featuring her and her rendition of “There’s No Place like Home.”
While director Eda Holmes keeps the play flowing along with quick scene changes covered by curtains reminiscent of the swirling sea, Bond relies on some farcical set pieces like the play rehearsal and the dead man’s funeral and its dueling sopranos.
Swirling through it is Hatch’s increasing madness, as he drifts from the well-dressed draper to scraps-wrapped mad man, including an amazing demonstration of how fast a roll of specially-ordered cloth can be cut into shreds.
Early on, you can see where this is all going while Bond makes it an interesting and bumpy ride.
That’s helped by a number of strong performances, especially Reid and Galligan, along with Jamieson, Ben Sanders’ Hollarcut and especially Millard’s drunken beachcomber Evens.
Camellia Koo contributed a nice, although minimalist set and there are good period costumes from Michael Gianfrancesco.
John Gzowski did the music and the eerie sounds of a small town and the ever-present winds and storms of the English Channel.
Holmes pulls it all together and makes “The Sea” a show worth seeing.