Reviews

There is a small core of classic playwrights, but some are eternal, and some are of their time; not thematically, for they all use the same tropes and traditions of universal storytelling, but in terms of language, sophistication and their ability to connect with us years later. Shakespeare wrote for the masses 500 years ago, and yet is timeless. Eugene O’Neill wrote less than 100 years ago – yet seems dated in his storytelling, even though both wrote about the same themes many times over.

“Charming” is an odd word to use about a show which tells of the death of more than 1,000 people, but charming is the first word that comes to mind with Titanic. Maury Yeston’s lovely score (albeit a little repetitive) is poignant and evocative, and Peter Stone’s book quite brilliantly establishes 60 unique and very different characters in just a few vignettes each, creating people we actually care for. It’s also often witty and clever, providing much needed chuckles to break the tension of what is to come.

“Charming” is an odd word to use about a show which tells of the death of more than 1,000 people, but charming is the first word that comes to mind with Titanic. Maury Yeston’s lovely score (albeit a little repetitive) is poignant and evocative, and Peter Stone’s book quite brilliantly establishes 60 unique and very different characters in just a few vignettes each, creating people we actually care for. It’s also often witty and clever, providing much needed chuckles to break the tension of what is to come.

Playwright Catherine McKinnon explains that, as part of trilogy centred on the life-changing effects of traumatic events, “Hurt wrestles with the complexities of our actions towards one another at a time of crisis”.

Three people, implicated in an accident involving a child, face each other in the stark, impersonal space of a hospital waiting room. Their emotions and reactions, distorted by guilt and grief and fear, expose the fragility of the human psyche and the tensions that arise when self control crumbles.