Sarah Belcher’s Deborah and Phil Corbitt’s Colin in Alison Carr’s All At Sea. Picture: Matt Savage
ALL At Sea, Alison Carr’s new play inspired by the notorious “canoe man” story, is making waves at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough.
Maria Crocker directs Phil Corbitt and Sarah Belcher in this premiere co-production with Newcastle’s Live Theatre. “This sharp and witty play requires two expert actors to bring this extraordinary couple to life, and this casting has delivered just that,” she says.
Drawing inspiration from Seaton Carew couple John and Anne Darwin, whose insurance fraud hit the headlines in the early 2000s, All At Sea is the story of Colin and Deborah, a couple with spiralling debt, a sky-high mortgage and seemingly nowhere to turn.
Then Colin comes up with the idea of faking his own death in a canoeing accident in the North Sea for an insurance payout.
Phil Corbitt’s Colin, the canoe man in All At Sea. Picture: Von Fox Promotions
“I’m often drawn to stories about ordinary people doing extraordinary things, and if they’re rooted in the North East, then even better,” says director Maria.
“I first approached Alison with the idea for a play about the ‘canoe couple’ five years ago. I’d always been fascinated by the story, but during lockdown, in a time of confinement and claustrophobia, when we were all ‘locked in’ our flats and houses, it got me thinking about the reality of it all.”
Maria continues: “I wasn’t interested in putting the ‘real life’ version on stage and was certain that the story needed to be reimagined by someone who could tap into the potential darkness and horror, alongside the humour and absurdity.
Sarah Belcher’s Deborah in All At Sea. Picture: Matt Savage
“I knew Alison had to write it. Thankfully, she said yes. I offered Alison the seed of an idea and handed it over to her imagination. Alison has created something totally unique, inspired by the original story but completely her own; a sharp, witty and moving exploration of a relationship surviving under extreme pressure. It has been a real privilege to bring it to life.”
Stephen Joseph Theatre and Live Theatre, Newcastle, present All At Sea at Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, until October 31. Box office: 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.com.
Did you know?
ALISON Carr’s earlier plays, Caterpillar and The Last Quiz Night On Earth, played the Stephen Joseph Theatre in 2018 and 2020 respectively.
Who is in the creative team for All At Sea?
ALISON Carr, director; Maria Crocker, director; Hannah Sibai, designer; Roma Yagnik, sound designer; Catja Hamilton, lighting designer, and Ziad Jabero, composer.
Phil Corbitt’s Colin emerging from the shadows in All At Sea. Picture: Matt Savage
REVIEW: Live Theatre, Newcastle and Stephen Joseph Theatre present All At Sea, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, until October 31 ****
ALL At Sea, surely the perfect title for a show in Scarborough, is the third Alison Carr work to play Stephen Joseph Theatre, following Caterpillar and The Last Quiz Night On Earth.
This time, however, it is a premiere, one that carries the Made In Scarborough tag, albeit in a co-production with Live Theatre, Newcastle.
The story may sound familiar: a North Eastern man burdened with credit card debts and a heavy mortgage fakes his death in a canoeing accident in the North Sea, whereupon his wife enacts his complex plan to secure life insurance, lying to their sons all the while.
So far, so John and Anne Darwin, the canoe fraud couple from Seaton Carew, but that story is only an inspiration, a launching pad, for Carr’s psychological thriller that very much rows its own course.
Significantly too, condensed into 90 minutes, this is a two-hander as claustrophobic and compressed as the deceitful life that Colin (Phil Corbitt) must now live, hiding behind a fake wall in the sewing room, underneath the stairs, while awaiting the pay-out.
One stairwell step clicks to open and shut in Hannah Sibai’s domestic design, but like every one of Colin’s ideas, it is faulty, with a mind of its own. A mis-step, as it were.
Initially, Carr’s tone is humorous, in the manner of a jaunty episode of The Likely Lads, but All At Sea morphs into a study of a gradually fracturing marriage, one where Colin’s wife, Deborah (Sarah Belcher), has a mind of her own too.
Corbitt’s Colin foresees his maritime mishap turning into a merry time, bringing freedom and a new start with a false passport. Instead, this witless Walter Mitty is as much deceiving himself as everyone else, the escapist dreamer with no escape. He can only leave the house in disguise, always scurrying into his hole if the bell rings.
He has always controlled Deborah, manipulated her, but now she is the one who can live the double life, on the one hand still going along with his conceit, but on the other, suddenly blossoming with her pottery classes, brighter clothes and tipsy nights out. The more she does so, the more irritating she finds him – the sound of his mealtime chewing turned up to emphasise its impact in Roma Yagnik’s sound design.
The more Deborah finds self-expression and self-worth, the more the coercive yet impotent Colin belittles her, in a classic case of gaslighting, as Carr’s early humour dissipates into the torrid sea swell of Nora Helmer’s need to escape in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. Instead of the avaricious, bullying, selfish, imprisoned Colin, Deborah is the one who finds the new identity.
Maria Crocker’s direction turns up the heat gradually, like a frog being placed in a pan of cold water, until the juddering finale that is darker than Whitby Jet yet feels like justice served. Belcher and Corbitt likewise bring rising intensity to the disintegrating chemistry of the capricious, conniving Colin and Deborah, the devoted dormouse-turned independent free spirit as his canoe con capsizes. He is indeed dead to her after all.
Review by Charles Hutchinson
