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.
