Sheila's Island

The warm sunshine of a summer evening in Oxfordshire was a distant memory on entering the auditorium of The Corn Exchange Theatre in Wallingford, where the bleakness of a November day in the Lake District had been conjured up by The Sinodun Players.  The dry ice and/or smoke machines must have been on full power for a good while, as the whole stage was filled with mist, with foggy clouds enveloping the rocks on the lakeside set.  There was even standing water downstage left.  The setting was enhanced by the sound design which featured the murmur of tiny waves lapping up against the island’s shores, and the lighting and projections which evoked the cold greyness of the Lake District in late autumn.

The premise is that the four principal characters are participants in a work-based team building exercise, and it is their misfortune to sink their boat on the rocky shore of an island in Derwentwater.  How will they get on when they are stuck together in splendid isolation, and learn more of each other’s characters?  Like the waters of the lake, the piece ebbed and flowed, but the quality of the characterisation and the chemistry between the four women was consistently impressive.  It probably helped that they all had to make their entrances through that standing water, arriving centre stage in soaking gear.  It’s always a test to multitask, but conversations that tie in to some action – in this case a complete change of outer clothing on stage – are usually very persuasive.  By the time the women were in their clean, dry clothes, we already knew something about them and about how they would interact with each other.

There is a narrative here – will the women survive their ordeal? – but this is primarily a character-lead play exploring these women’s lives and relationships.  The director clearly understands this very well as she was able to draw complex, believable performances out of each actor.  The ways in which the women reacted to each other, and indeed drifted in and out of scenes, were very well observed.

The programme quite rightly drew attention to the technical challenges of the play, and in particular the use of video projection onto the cyclorama.  This was cleverly designed so that even the more substantial pieces of scenery did not interfere with the projections.  The lighting design was subdued enough not to wash out the projections, but still adequate for us to see the actors’ actions and expressions quite clearly, while the colour palette added to  the cold bleakness of the setting.  Lighting and sound co-ordinated well in many of the special effects.

Sheila’s Island” might appear superficially straightforward – four women survive for a night on an uninhabited island – but it calls for sensitive performances from the actors and brings technical challenges for the production team.  As always, The Sinodun Players proved themselves more than equal to the demands of the play, and this was another entertaining and thought-provoking presentation.

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