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Festival Theatre STORY FROM THE SEA
Kirstin Innes discusses realism and responsibility with the director of submarine-set drama Kursk
While Hollywood loves its war stories, theatre and the military have traditionally made uncomfortable bedfellows, if they’ve even got past first base at all. That began to change, certainly on the Fringe, after the invasion of Iraq. Over the past five years, the military drama has rather begun to dominate Fringe schedules, whether as realist verbatim theatre, or as an abstracted, imaginative response. Both approaches bring different but equally large responsibilities to their subjects.
Somewhere between both of these lurks Kursk, a new immersive multimedia piece by BAC- affilliated theatre company Sound & Fury. As the title indicates, the play deals with the sinking of the Russian submarine Kursk in 2000, a tragedy in which everyone on board died. Although the company have filtered the event through the eyes of a fictional British submarine crew keeping tabs on the Russians, they’ve tried to create as realistic an experience for the audience as possible.
‘We use sound in cinematic detail, to evoke a
sense of place and environment,’ says Dan Jones, the company’s director. ‘In the case of a submarine that’s particularly apt because you know a submarine is one of the world’s most sophisticated listening devices. It’s a world where everybody’s acoustic sense has to be heightened in order to survive; it’s a matter of life and death that they listen really carefully to everything that goes on around them.’
The company were also given access to Royal Navy submarines, which their designer has tried to replicate in the Drill Hall.
‘Submariners have to cope with such enormous responsibility in such cramped circumstances. When we got on board we realised that there was an extraordinary tale to tell just about the everyday lives of submariners. In a sense we strove for absolute realism in our set as a benchmark by which the audience can measure the absolute suffering of those submariners who did die in the Kursk, without being voyeuristic about what that suffering involved.’ ■ Kursk, The University of Edinburgh Drill Hall, 556 6550, 20–29 Aug, 10.30pm, £8.50–£9.50 (£7.50–£8.50).
20–27 Aug 2009 THE LIST FESTIVAL MAGAZINE 57
‘I THINK THAT SUPERNATURAL ELEMENT ADDS TO THE SEXINESS, MAKES IT MORE EXCITING’
the flipside is you can say, “It wasn’t me, she or he made me do it”.’
Obviously the story can only end tragically, yet there’s a surprising humour that runs through the script, partly arising from the inappropriate sexual chemistry between the two leads. ‘It’s that thing of fancying people you don’t particularly want to fancy, that’s always annoying,’ says Munro. ‘It’s annoying to both sexes, but men had more power to act on it at that time. That said I think she is an incredibly annoying woman generally. I’ve imagined she sees herself as special, which of course makes you want to slap her. But in another way it’s magnificent that you can live in some place like a dunghill at the back end of beyond and see yourself in some sense as a goddess.’ Dominic Hill’s production promises to evoke a lush midsummer rural landscape, with Munro’s characteristically rich but simple poetry part of the appeal. With the remarkably accomplished Kathryn Howden in the lead role, and a strong supporting cast, the piece seems set to create a magic of its own. But does Munro believe in magic? She gives me another bewitching smile, and adds, carefully choosing her words. ‘Well, one of the things about magic is that some of it comes from an evocation of place. If you don’t live in a society that has television and the internet and the cinema, then the scale of nature feels bigger, it becomes overwhelming. I think that’s where the magic really comes from.’
The Last Witch, Traverse Theatre, 228 1404, 23–29 Aug, 7.30pm (27, 29 2.30pm), £10–£25.