| Dead Fish, at Stockton's ARC until Saturday 11 October. Reviewed by Sonia Rothwell. Sonia is 29 and lives in Yarm. |  | | Sonia Rothwell |
|
For one of the opening productions of the newly re-floated ARC, Dead Fish may not sound a promising title. Far from it. Teesside writer/director Gordon Steel's family drama set against the backdrop of the demise of the shipyards, provides thoroughly satisfying, if emotionally draining entertainment. It's part of a scheme where audiences pay what they can for selected productions. Yes, technically that means you could have paid 1p for a play which is frankly worth one thousand times that. Steel and ARC's director Kevin Parker are keen to show non-theatre-goers that plays don't always involve a tennis racquet-brandishing fop walking through French windows. Dead Fish couldn't be further from that image. The set consists of a corrugated-iron backdrop with huge industrial chains strewn around the edge of the stage. Symbolically, it shows the omnipresent influence of the shipyards on life in the area at that time. The play was written ten years ago when the closure of yards like Smith's Dock was still a recent, raw memory. Although that recent past, alarmingly, is now textbook history, Dead Fish's impact isn't diminished. The story follows a Middlesbrough family whose future seems all too bleakly defined for it. The Blacketts are Mam Joan (Annie Orwin), Dad Gil (Bill Fellows) and two sons, Gavin and Raymond. They live with the constant shadow of illness (that's why Dad, an "elite welder" in the shipyards, is so well paid) and the even blacker threat of poverty. The dead fish of the title symbolise the lack of vitality in the Tees and those whose livelihoods depend on it. Don't think that for all of this apparent "Grim-up-Northness" the play is hard work, because it isn't. An excellent piece of ensemble acting from a mainly local cast makes the Blackett family come to life. Promising footballer Gavin (Ian Sharp) and brother Ray (an excellent performance from Neil Grainger) who doesn't want to suffer his Dad's fate in the shipyards despite it being the only work realistically available to him, seem like they grew up together. Their chemistry generates a lot of the production's funnier moments, like when they're at a Boro match or when Gavin teases Ray about his girlfriend by playing "Julie" by Shakin' Stevens. In the interval I heard more than a few people comment "It's just like normal life." There are things a lot of audiences will identify with - subtle touches like Dad always switching the lights off after everyone, and no matter how much you check, there's always a tea-spoon left at the bottom of the washing up bowl. The cast work so well with the script that it's not hard to empathise with them. Chris Rea's "Steel River" playing in the auditorium before curtain up sets a very local tone for a superior production, which should get audiences in to ARC regardless of the canny pricing policy.
NB: There are no more "pay what you can" days for Dead Fish, though there will be for future productions.
| 
