Stage Dragon: Rough Crossing – Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Published on: 12 Mar, 2019
Updated on: 12 Mar, 2019

By Ference Hepp

We are transported to the luxury of a 1930s cruise liner in Rough Crossing this week at the Yvonne Arnaud.

Bill Kenwright’s production of Tom Stoppard’s play, directed by Rachel Kavanaugh, was written in 1984 and adapted from Ferenc Molnár’s Play at the Castle, with three original songs from Andre Previn (or Preview!) who sadly passed away recently.

This play first opened in London’s Lyttelton Theatre in 1984 and crossed to New York in 1997. The plot is somewhat absurd and does have some potential, but it’s much drawn out to a full-length play, which really could be told in 45 minutes.

The humour is Noel Coward-esque and the laughs are plenty in the first 15 minutes, but humour significantly decreases through the piece, with only occasional laughter moments.

The story centres on two Hungarian playwrights, Sandor Turai (John Partridge) and Alex Gal (Matthew Cottle) who board the ship in Cherbourg en route to New York where they plan to present their latest musical comedy, with the help of their composer Adam Adam (Rob Ostlere).

Their leading actors are also on the ship, Natasha Navratilova (Issy Van Randwick) and Ivor Fish (Simon Dutton) who are accidentally overheard flirting on the upper deck one night which upsets Adam because he is supposed to be together with Natasha.

Add to this a hapless cabin steward called Dvornichek (Charlie Stemp) who seems quite a novice at his job, but in fact learns his trade quickly overnight, as well as blossoming into an expert at the complicated plot of the two playwrights’ work, but never managing to get Turai his cognac, and chaos reigns.

But all turns out OK in Act Two when the play is rehearsed and thanks to Turai’s ingenious plan, the flirting of the previous night becomes fiction as part of his plot and therefore Natasha can now happily marry Adam with Ivor out of the real picture.

The set design by Colin Richmond looks good on the Arnaud stage with both the inside and the decking of this ship looking realistic but not overly busy.

There is some excellent comedy timing from all the cast, especially Van Randwick and Stemp, with also an element of physical comedy halfway through the second half when the cast throw themselves around into various positions to represent stormy waters, but the storytelling is stretched out far too much, which makes us lose concentration and interest.

Some of the dialogue does not have as much of a varied tone as it should do, and why is Dvornichek steady on his feet when all the others seem to be falling about and vice versa?

The rehearsal which takes up all of Act Two finally draws to a conclusion, a random song-and-dance number with some skilful moves from Partridge and Stemp which at least causes a smile or two. But overall the piece feels rather slow, old-fashioned, and an opportunity lost for what could have been a clever farce.

Rough Crossing runs until Saturday, March 16, and tickets are available via – www.yvonnearnaud.co.uk or by telephoning the box office on 01483 440000.