Shuggy Boats Review – 60th Birthday Party Brings Sexual Revelation | stage

YYou can imagine a Victorian melodrama in which a respectable wife causes panic when she runs off with a woman. It will have provocative themes about feminism, loyalty and hypocrisy. The Lord Chamberlain would almost certainly ban it.

Fast forward to Tynemouth, 2021, and the story itself has no such punch. On her 60th birthday, Maeve (Philippa Wilson) She is reminded of her first kiss – not with the gentle Jukka (Dave Jones), her husband of nearly 40 years, but with the long-lost Helen (Charlie Hardwicke, on screen). The memory is the jolt Maeve needs to turn everything around and pursue her true sexual identity.

Except there’s not a lot of fluctuations. In Jackie Lawrence’s play, a sidestep from a successful television career, the only friction Maeve causes is with her gay son Ryan (Benjamin Story), who is upset about being outdone in the alternative lifestyle game. It’s completely reactionary.

Meanwhile, Jukka, busy with the mastermind show, actively supports the woman he loves. If going it alone is what Maeve needs, he’s all for it. The adjustments are less traumatic for her niece (Natalie Ann Jamieson) and sister (Libby Davison). Lawrence deliberately plays with expectations: it’s good for a refreshing atmosphere, less so for a sense of urgency.

It’s the same with stories of pregnancy and bereavement. They are soap opera ripples, not momentous dramatic events, in a play that relies on small-screen techniques: short scenes, phone calls, glances into the camera. Lawrence tries to add heft with references to Pride festivals, the Jarrow March, prison literacy, and poverty (Maeve works in a Providence lending society), none of which have much bearing on the story, even if they show that the playwright’s heart is in the right place.

Set in a seaside fish shack where nearby rocking boats recall past adventures, it has been strikingly designed by Alison Ashton whose set is built from paintings that resemble many shipwrecks. But there’s too much lingering in Fiona Macpherson’s production, presented by Jackdaw Media, a play that’s shy of confrontation and reluctant to explore the inner lives of its characters.