Sandy Pritchard-Gordon

Sandy Pritchard-Gordon
Theatre Blog

Thursday 14 February 2013

Port at The Lyttleton


Port at The Lyttleton

Kate O’Flynn is the best thing about Port.  That’s not to say that the play isn’t great, because once you’re tuned in and inured to the relentless swearing of each and every character, Port is a realistic if brutal portrayal of life in Stockport in the late eighties and nineties.  It’s just that Miss O’Flynn, whilst staying on stage for the entire two and half hours, delivers a performance of outstanding quality and depth.  And no wonder Port delivers a realistic and honest representation of this northern town situated to the south east of Manchester, as both the playwright, Simon Stephens, and the director, Marianne Elliott, grew up here.

Port centres around Kate O’Flynn’s character, Rachael Keats, who we first see as an eleven-year-old sitting in the passenger seat of an old car alongside her mother, Christine, played by Liz White and with six-year-old brother, Billy (Mike Noble) trying to sleep in the back.  They have been locked out of their home by what Rachael describes as their “dead weird” and it transpires, difficult and violent father.  Rachael has a premonition that her cigarette smoking mother is about to abandon them and she couldn’t be more correct, because Rachael’s next scene takes place in the cafeteria of the local hospital and we get to meet Jonathan Keats (Jack Deam) who is now in sole charge.  What follows is an episodic account of Rachael’s adolescence, incorporating her concern for the wayward Billy and marriage to a mirror image of her father (clever touch here, as Jack Deam plays both parts, illustrating how history tends to repeat itself) each period infused with an optimistic slant that life will get better and she will escape.  The final scene transports us back to the car, this time with a twenty-four year old Rachael in the driving seat and Billy beside her.  They’re staring up at their childhood home.  Some things never change, except that this time maybe they will.

All the actors portray their characters with conviction, but Jack Deam is especially menacing as both father and husband.  The scene in the hotel when he and Rachael have a marital row brought on by his jealous paranoia is particularly disturbing.  Mike Noble likewise makes an excellent older Billy, although his portrait of the boy as a child is less believable.  The old adage of “less is more” would work better.  The other top class performance is by Chris Bennett, playing the love of Rachael’s life, Danny.  He has a determination to do the right thing and the effect is extremely moving.

The play was first staged in the round at Manchester’s Royal Exchange in 2002, which has to be a totally different space to the vastness of The National’s Lyttleton Theatre.  Perhaps a more intimate setting would suit the play better, although somehow the enormous Lyttleton stage seems to accentuate the isolation of the characters in their concrete environment. Add to this the soundtrack of songs from the era and the play, although tending towards bleakness, also has a strangely poetic resonance.