The Water's Edge at Arcola Theatre

The Water's Edge at Arcola Theatre

06 February, 2009
by: Joe Harrod

An excellent night of chilling new drama at the Arcola begins badly when I'm stood up and forced by the exigencies of my work to dine on a cold Tesco sandwich. Sitting alone as the audience chatters, I console myself by reasoning that I can give Theresa Rebeck's latest the attention that such significant new work deserves. My focus is temporarily disturbed by the realisation that Robert Cavanah, the lead actor, is directing Danny Dyer in a forthcoming movie, predictably entitled Pimp. This raises the tantalising possibility that I could befriend the actor and persuade him to crush TV's most irritating geezer under a skip or between two cars.

I'm still toying with the idea of killing Dyer when the lights go down. The Water's Edge takes place in rural Massachusetts, where an absentee father returns to visit his estranged wife and children. The scene is brilliantly set with struts serving as trees, subtle day and dusk lighting and a dilapidated clapboard house and porch running along the back of the stage. Lighting and music build and sustain an uncomfortable, brittle atmosphere and the performances are first-rate.

Richard, the returning 'Dad done good' with millions of dollars and a trophy girlfriend, is wonderfully played by Cavanah, relaxing immediately into his rural surrounds and looking rather beautiful and chiselled, like a mature De Niro. 'He's handsome' remarks his bitter ex. 'It's not everything, but it's not nothing'. His much younger girlfriend (Kate Sissons) is slightly peripheral, easily manipulated and tearful, but ends up a sympathetic, rational voice.

The family left behind consist of a wife, Helen and two kids. Erica (Cressida Trew) is a successful student who swears a blue streak and veers wildly between hostility and curiosity. It's a hard role in which to win empathy but she convinces. Nate (Mark Field) is an off-the-rails shop clerk who dotes on his mother. Initially he seems to be gurning, however the audience soon realise he's not overacting but playing someone with a host of social disorders. Madeleine Potter as Helen sparkles with brains, sex appeal and anger and it's easy to see how she eclipses other women in the mind of Richard. She's not, however, a perfect Mom.

It transpires that a third child has been left behind, drowned in the lake, and that Richard has been blamed for this tragedy down the years. He has, in fact, been forced out. His own motives are deeply confused and it soon becomes evident that, like his complex-ridden son, he wants to turn back time and return to his old life: house, wife, kids and all. First, he needs forgiveness.

I'd like you to see the play, so suffice it to say that things don't go well. Tension builds and strong central themes are explored. Richard advances a typical, arrogant male world-view: the woods make him feel good, the past was an accident, he is ready to be forgiven and assimilated. Against this, Helen argues that it is wrong for men to have their crimes expunged by time, which is meaningless in comparison to love, family and sin. Time, Helen explains, is an illusion when first love, marriage, death and betrayal are all as fresh in mind and soul as the food on the table. She may be right, but she's also unhinged.

So, this is a coherent domestic drama, with likeable and believable characters. More than that, it's a slow-building portrait of psychosis, resentment and revenge with a well-worked denouement. If there's one problem with the play it's dialogue. Rebeck's ideas and intellect sparkle throughout, but characters veer every once in a while into mouthpiece soliloquies that nobody, not even family members treading on eggshells, would listen to without either cutting in or wandering off. The play is also frankly too long. If there was more interruption, less wholesale exposition of ideas and some arguments touched on but not concluded, the play could be shorter, punchier and a degree more effective.

Despite these minor reservations The Water's Edge is a chilling, brilliantly staged new play from a significant American writer. I urge you to go and see it.


Production shots by Alastair Muir

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Joe Harrod