Sand Castles

“Sand Castles” was written by Bob Larbey, who was responsible for a succession of hit TV shows in the late 20th century.  Many of the themes from those shows are revisited in this play: there’s the British obsession with class, familiar from “The Good Life”; there’s the overbearing, opinionated but ultimately frustrated organiser, previously incarnated as Martin in “Ever Decreasing Circles”, and there’s the affection and tolerance born out of long relationships, as seen in “As Time Goes By”.  The play is even structured rather like a sitcom: characters are established, new information comes to light, and those characters then adapt to changing circumstances through an interlocking series of dialogues.  And just like those television sitcoms, the action is anchored in a single location, in this case a row of three beach huts on a beach somewhere on the south coast of England.

How do you evoke a location that is essentially just sand and water without using either sand or water?  The answer proved to be by using paint: the floor had been cleverly painted in exactly the right tone of yellowish brown, with enough variation of shade and colour to create the illusion of a sandy beach.  The sand drifted up against the front of the beach huts, and formed dunes upstage and towards the wings which merged seamlessly into the floor.  The sky was almost impossibly blue, but the idealism and simplicity of this successfully evoked the style and humour of the saucy seaside postcard.  A complex pattern of legs overlapped each other to give the set a two-dimensional appearance to reinforce the impression of a postcard. As for the beach huts themselves, they were as trim and prim as you would hope, maintained to a standard expected in the unwritten rules of beach hut ownership.  Well, except for hut no.2, of course …

The costumes had been well thought through: changes in costume for different days, and complete new costumes with more layers for the chill at the end of the season.  The broadly contemporary styles were appropriate to a play written in the 21st century but exploring 20th century values, and costume and character had been carefully matched, as in Stan’s brash shirts, and the gradual lightening and brightening of Pauline’s dresses.

No sooner has the first respectable couple opened up their beach hut than the Billets arrive.  Stan Billet is an archetypal Larbey creation: domineering, opinionated, energetic and obsessively well organised, he is quite prepared to say what others might be afraid to think, and displays an almost childish petulance when things don’t go his way.  The class-consciousness of this little corner of the beach is exposed by the arrival of Doug, whose more working class accent and background in fish ring alarm bells in Stan’s mind, and the developing interactions between Stan and Doug are at the heart of the social commentary in the play.

The audience in the Players Theatre certainly enjoyed Larbey’s comedic dissection of Stan and Doug’s characters, especially in the second act when the careful scene setting of the first act is developed and resolved in entertaining ways.  The company ensured that the protagonists remained plausible and relatable throughout, and the themes of the piece were explored with the Players’ usual attention to detail.

© NODA CIO.  All rights reserved.

© NODA CIO. All rights reserved.