In Skagway at the Arcola Theatre

The draughty, rough wood basement of Dalston’s Arcola Theatre suits a play encompassing sea voyage, a merciless winter and cold-blooded murder. We enter to turbulent sea storm sound effects and, perhaps because conditions outside are not dissimilar, the audience has dwindled to about 20. But In Skagway deserves a much larger audience. The celebrated actress and author Karen Ardiff’s latest venture, this play fully deserves the prestigious award it’s won in Ireland – the Irish Playwrights and Screenwriters Guild Best New Play Award.

At the tail end of the 19^th century, the Alaskan town of Skagway has been deserted in the wake of a false gold hype. Aspiring actress Frankie first encountered Irish-speaking starveling May many years ago while boarding a passage to America; Frankie smuggled May onboard the ship, and has since employed her as an assistant. In real-time, Frankie is chair-bound and speechless after a stroke. May has invested the gold money of her intrepid daughter, Teresa-Belle, which she claims she will earn back when Frankie recovers and performs her famous dance, last witnessed at the unveiling of the Statue of Liberty. As cunning Teresa-Belle attempts to win 5,000 dollars back through deception, the narrative oscillates into the past. Twists of adultery and hostility are unearthed within Frankie and May’s codependency.

Ardiff, with her multidisciplinary background, knows how to rivet an audience with staging. The choreography of the piece is partly the work of movement director Lucy Cullingford, but it is also mapped out with detail in Ardiff’s script. Clownish dance and cabaret-style performances embellish the no-budget set, as does the expert use of sound; sudden bangs, unexpected crashes and a music box thrown open at interludes to emit a sinister nursery tune. Lighting is minimal but effective, veering between dim and pitch black.

Characters provide a disorientating multiplicity of interpretations. Angeline Ball as Frankie transforms from paralysed invalid to bawdy actress with seamless grace. In the chair, she performs only with her eyes, which she can pool with tears or cause to sparkle with glee, such is her command of expression. Geraldine Alexander is excellent as May, the doddery domestic with a threatening shadow. By turns frightful and hilarious, it is May who performs an act so unusually perverse that it draws literal gasps from the audience. 

But is this crime – indeed is any of the corruption of the play – real? Or is it what Frankie creates, through the distorted mirror of her brain damage and bitterness? The author’s note to the script speculates that Frankie may experience “deficits and altered realities” and plays out “her own arc within the real-time scenes”, but the main impression we get from her expressions during the performance are of aggression and cruelty. This leads us initially to dislike her, rather than recognising her impotence and the nuances of her confusion. But this is more a reflection on our narrow-mindedness than anything the production team are accountable for. Perhaps it’s a planned disorientation, which resonates after we leave the theatre. 

Confusing but eloquent, In Skagway describes a rootless, commercialised existence in which the human body and heart are saleable.

Martha Thompson

In Skagway is at the Arcola Theatre until 1^st March 2014. For further information or to book visit the theatre’s website here.