Linton
08-06-2009, 22:03
From The Times
June 1, 2009
Theatrical realism in Kursk
The sinking of the Russian submarine Kursk has inspired a bold experiment in theatrical realism
Kursk, at the Young Vic
Jasper Rees
Theatre is capable of taking its audience more or less anywhere merely through word and action and the odd prop. Even for the most imagination-stretching of art forms, however, life on board a submarine might be deemed a bridge too far. It’s been memorably done on film — the one that submariners all swear by is Das Boot rather than The Hunt for Red October. But how can theatre fully convey the cabin fever, the mental bends, the chronic uncertainty of the submerged life at sea?
Audiences for a new play at the Young Vic will be taking what is perhaps the first, and certainly the most realistic, theatrical dive to the ocean depths. Kursk takes place in the Maria, the box-like studio space where, as closely as possible, the interior of a hunter-killer submarine has been replicated in pipes, platforms, wires and blinking lights. Authenticity will be conveyed above all in the disembodied roar and hiss, growls and grunts both made and heard by the gigantic listening device that is a sub.
The title of the play gives at least some of the story away. It tells of the horrific death in 2000 of 118 Russian seamen aboard a stricken nuclear submarine in the Barents Sea. The majority of them died soon after an on-board explosion, but 23 survived in an airtight part of the cabin for several days while President Putin refused to let Nato come to the rescue.
The argument of the play is that Nato was very much in a position to help. The Russian Navy was testing new weapons systems and showing them off to the Chinese. At least two US submarines are known to have been watching closely. The supposition of Kursk is that a British submarine is also in the neighbourhood, and it is the one that picks up the aural evidence of distress. But as its commander of this sub (on which the play is set) says: “We’re an attack vessel, not a f***ing lifeboat.”
Kursk is a collaboration between the theatre company Sound & Fury, which specialises in surround-sound designs of cinematic scope, and the playwright Bryony Lavery. They were first teamed four years ago by a funding initiative that pairs young companies with established writers. Staging a submarine drama appealed to all. For Lavery the lure was “the claustrophobia of the space”. For Dan Jones, of Sound & Fury, it was putting on stage “the extraordinary mind game of submarining combined with the absurdity of the submariner’s domestic life: making tea alongside a nuclear reactor”.
For a while they toyed with setting the drama on the Kursk itself. The most bizarre ideas for realising the human tragedy were tested and discarded: the Kursk as a nightmare vision of Chekhovian stasis; the disaster as dramatised by clowns. “It became clear that normal life at sea is so extraordinary,” explains Mark Espiner, of Sound & Fury, “that we were going to miss a trick if we didn’t actually use that as a benchmark against which to set the disaster. There was the potential for voyeurism. Also, how are you ever actually going to get the idea of what the last 23 survivors of the Kursk were dealing with?”
Had a wackier idea prevailed, it’s very unlikely that the production would have had such enthusiastic support from the Royal Navy. Among the play’s consultants is the chairman of the international submariners association, who happened to meet the Kursk’s crew in St Petersburg not long before she sailed. A former Polaris commander who now runs the Royal Navy Submarine Museum in Gosport also advised, as did an ex-coxswain who was serving at the time of the disaster.
One adviser even ended up in the cast. Ian Ashpitel is a submariner turned actor who to this day lists reading Morse code at 25 words a minute on his CV. As a radio operator on a submarine at the height of the Cold War, he is full of tales of every hue: from breaking through the ice to play cricket at the North Pole to sneaking into Murmansk harbour to spy on a new Soviet aircraft carrier from ten metres under its keel. It may seem a strange career leap, but not to Ashpitel. “You don’t see daylight for 12 weeks and start doing things like putting raincoats on and umbrellas up, pretending it’s a rainy day. ‘Morning, terrible weather.’ Silly stuff. Watching TV programmes that aren’t there.” So it was but a step into the rehearsal room.
As part of their preparation, a visit to HMS Devonport was laid on. Jones took along his microphone to capture authentic sounds, while the five actors had a go on a simulator that fakes the sensation of a 60 degree dive. They also went aboard a real sub to get a feel for the actual cramped space. “It was like the first time you go to New York,” Lavery says. “You’ve seen it on film. It’s strangely alike but completely different”. For Ashpitel it was an unwelcome trip down memory lane. “I hadn’t been down one for 28 years and after ten minutes I thought: ‘I’ve got to get out of here’.”
The idea is to reproduce that oppressive intimacy. It’s a promenade production, so the audience will be able to wander under the conning tower and loiter outside the karzi. By coincidence, a full house will tally numerically with the hundred-plus seamen aboard a nuclear sub. Naturally there’s no interval. It will be a unique mark of the play’s success if by the end they are all desperate to get out.
Kursk previews at the Young Vic, London SE1 (020-7922 7922), from Wed and opens on June 8
June 1, 2009
Theatrical realism in Kursk
The sinking of the Russian submarine Kursk has inspired a bold experiment in theatrical realism
Kursk, at the Young Vic
Jasper Rees
Theatre is capable of taking its audience more or less anywhere merely through word and action and the odd prop. Even for the most imagination-stretching of art forms, however, life on board a submarine might be deemed a bridge too far. It’s been memorably done on film — the one that submariners all swear by is Das Boot rather than The Hunt for Red October. But how can theatre fully convey the cabin fever, the mental bends, the chronic uncertainty of the submerged life at sea?
Audiences for a new play at the Young Vic will be taking what is perhaps the first, and certainly the most realistic, theatrical dive to the ocean depths. Kursk takes place in the Maria, the box-like studio space where, as closely as possible, the interior of a hunter-killer submarine has been replicated in pipes, platforms, wires and blinking lights. Authenticity will be conveyed above all in the disembodied roar and hiss, growls and grunts both made and heard by the gigantic listening device that is a sub.
The title of the play gives at least some of the story away. It tells of the horrific death in 2000 of 118 Russian seamen aboard a stricken nuclear submarine in the Barents Sea. The majority of them died soon after an on-board explosion, but 23 survived in an airtight part of the cabin for several days while President Putin refused to let Nato come to the rescue.
The argument of the play is that Nato was very much in a position to help. The Russian Navy was testing new weapons systems and showing them off to the Chinese. At least two US submarines are known to have been watching closely. The supposition of Kursk is that a British submarine is also in the neighbourhood, and it is the one that picks up the aural evidence of distress. But as its commander of this sub (on which the play is set) says: “We’re an attack vessel, not a f***ing lifeboat.”
Kursk is a collaboration between the theatre company Sound & Fury, which specialises in surround-sound designs of cinematic scope, and the playwright Bryony Lavery. They were first teamed four years ago by a funding initiative that pairs young companies with established writers. Staging a submarine drama appealed to all. For Lavery the lure was “the claustrophobia of the space”. For Dan Jones, of Sound & Fury, it was putting on stage “the extraordinary mind game of submarining combined with the absurdity of the submariner’s domestic life: making tea alongside a nuclear reactor”.
For a while they toyed with setting the drama on the Kursk itself. The most bizarre ideas for realising the human tragedy were tested and discarded: the Kursk as a nightmare vision of Chekhovian stasis; the disaster as dramatised by clowns. “It became clear that normal life at sea is so extraordinary,” explains Mark Espiner, of Sound & Fury, “that we were going to miss a trick if we didn’t actually use that as a benchmark against which to set the disaster. There was the potential for voyeurism. Also, how are you ever actually going to get the idea of what the last 23 survivors of the Kursk were dealing with?”
Had a wackier idea prevailed, it’s very unlikely that the production would have had such enthusiastic support from the Royal Navy. Among the play’s consultants is the chairman of the international submariners association, who happened to meet the Kursk’s crew in St Petersburg not long before she sailed. A former Polaris commander who now runs the Royal Navy Submarine Museum in Gosport also advised, as did an ex-coxswain who was serving at the time of the disaster.
One adviser even ended up in the cast. Ian Ashpitel is a submariner turned actor who to this day lists reading Morse code at 25 words a minute on his CV. As a radio operator on a submarine at the height of the Cold War, he is full of tales of every hue: from breaking through the ice to play cricket at the North Pole to sneaking into Murmansk harbour to spy on a new Soviet aircraft carrier from ten metres under its keel. It may seem a strange career leap, but not to Ashpitel. “You don’t see daylight for 12 weeks and start doing things like putting raincoats on and umbrellas up, pretending it’s a rainy day. ‘Morning, terrible weather.’ Silly stuff. Watching TV programmes that aren’t there.” So it was but a step into the rehearsal room.
As part of their preparation, a visit to HMS Devonport was laid on. Jones took along his microphone to capture authentic sounds, while the five actors had a go on a simulator that fakes the sensation of a 60 degree dive. They also went aboard a real sub to get a feel for the actual cramped space. “It was like the first time you go to New York,” Lavery says. “You’ve seen it on film. It’s strangely alike but completely different”. For Ashpitel it was an unwelcome trip down memory lane. “I hadn’t been down one for 28 years and after ten minutes I thought: ‘I’ve got to get out of here’.”
The idea is to reproduce that oppressive intimacy. It’s a promenade production, so the audience will be able to wander under the conning tower and loiter outside the karzi. By coincidence, a full house will tally numerically with the hundred-plus seamen aboard a nuclear sub. Naturally there’s no interval. It will be a unique mark of the play’s success if by the end they are all desperate to get out.
Kursk previews at the Young Vic, London SE1 (020-7922 7922), from Wed and opens on June 8