Can You Teach Me How to “Leave”? (And come watch again!): Freshblood is of“fish”ally back in the Warwick Arts Centre

It is Thursday evening and the opening night of the play Can You Teach Me How to Breathe. I am waiting for the play to start, chatting with friends of the four actors sitting onstage, enclosed in the walls of a submarine, coated in shifting dark blue light. Each character ignores the other, moving in their own circles and pathways, yet never intersecting in the pre-show dimness. No two characters are the same: one prowls over the top of the submarine panelling, one jitters quietly, another looks about and one remains completely still. The scene is puzzling, a feeling bolstered by the tonal whiplash between songs played in the pre-show (think Do I Look Like Him by Tyler, the Creator and the Yellow Submarine by The Beatles, with some rousing sea shanties in the mix). Whilst I wasn’t particularly keen on the whiplash tonal disparities of music in the start, as I wouldn’t have minded some further emphasis on the melancholy, the scene was nonetheless striking and mysterious. This pervading sense of mystery hung over the stage in the pre-show, a mystery which trickles through Breathe as it progresses and continues to propel the action of this great play. 

The play is directed by Rhea Pereira, and written by Vienna Padamsee and it acts as Freshblood’s triumphant foray back into the WAC after a two year dry spell

Breathe is a new piece of student writing being performed in the Warwick Arts Centre and presented by the Freshblood Drama Society. The play is directed by Rhea Pereira, and written by Vienna Padamsee and it acts as Freshblood’s triumphant foray back into the WAC after a two year dry spell. We are introduced to four characters reluctantly trapped on a submarine, who have been informed by a BBC World Service voiceover that the submarine is sinking and that help is on the way. The voiceover was an interesting, complicating inclusion but I did feel the voiceovers could have been treated with some sound effects. Fuzz or white noise in the background, a crackle here and there would not have gone amiss, because instead, as is common with Warwick Drama, it did feel like just a voice, rather than a radio transmission received under the sea. The set up is complicated by the fact that none of them knows for sure why or how they are on the submarine or if they pledged allegiance to any organisation (bewilderingly, the US military). The frenetic framing device of the sinking submarine is absurd but allows for some distinctly touching and tragic story beats. Each of the characters get to share their stories and backgrounds, the inadequacy and menial quality of their lives up top, their regrets, and the personal conflicts still haunting them trapped at the literal bottom of the sea. The emotions triggered by this situation, longing, frustration and anger – were touchingly articulated in a handful of brilliant performances from our four piece cast.

Speaking of the cast, each of the actors’ performances was totally engaging. They all had a moment to shine, which is simultaneously great but also contributes slightly to how formulaic the play felt. I slightly ended up anticipating each characters’ next big moment, the next nugget of context or background to be related. This is, of course, not an inherently bad thing. It is great to get background and detail on each character, but there came a point where I was waiting for the next one, or trying to see the moment when this monologue or speech would pop up in the overall conversation. I felt this with the character of Frank who, while played brilliantly and emotively by Max Green, retreated quite strongly from the foreground of the play’s events until the end, in order to make room for other monologues. However, this point is not to discredit how engaging the performances were. I was particularly struck with the delicacy and potency with which Maddie Atkinson handled her monologue in the middle of the play. Her performance reeled the audience into feeling a deep sympathy and understanding for a character that could have easily become the stereotypical “annoying” or “talkative” character.

Charlie Muskett’s performance of Fish was heart wrenching. I’ve seen Muskett convincingly play comedic characters in previous productions, but it was wonderful to see him play a far odder, more puzzling character

Lili Gajan-Fowkes’ performance as Caleb was particularly physically embodied. As one might expect of a younger teenager/child (we are never given an age) Gajan-Fowkes plays Caleb as jumpy, excitable and excessively bored; a boredom which neatly and logically develops into a confused rage, a spiral of desperation shared by most of the inmates of the submarine. Everyone on stage, thankfully, responded uniquely to the portentous and contradictory reporting by the BBC World Service. Charlie Muskett’s performance of Fish was heart wrenching. I’ve seen Muskett convincingly play comedic characters in previous productions, but it was wonderful to see him play a far odder, more puzzling character. The oddness of Fish (cleverly revealed to mean Arti“fish”cial) allowed Muskett to have fun with more abstract, exaggerated depictions of physicality as he contorted and twisted his body in his moments alone on stage, which eventually culminated in the gorgeous closing scene where Fish heart-wrenchingly asks the void … the name of the play! It’s a very clever, touching scene which is realised by Muskett in the authenticity of his performance, the wonderful physical embodiment of his character and his potent use of pitch and volume when performing. Green’s performance of Frank also particularly shined in the final throes of Breathe. He convincingly demonstrated how Frank interprets this desperate situation, as something that can be fixed practically and logically, much like the cars he sells in the world above, a mask of pragmatism which covers up a desperation we see later on. 

Beyond the performances, this play also looks phenomenal. This is probably the best looking set I have seen at Warwick drama in my three years of participating. Too too often am I looking at an empty, sparse space onstage at the Warwick Arts Centre, straining to imagine the implied space. Drama is often sparse, setting can and sometimes should be implied in order to fufill directorial and monetary requirements (I too am guilty of monastic stage space, sorry). But refreshingly this space looks fantastic. As my companion said afterwards, it is the little details that make the set feel so whole. Working Buttons! Satisfying clicky switches! Removable panels! Lights that turn on and off! The set helped fantastically in constructing the claustrophobia, the emptiness (or “vacancy” if you will) felt by the characters, and the tension festering in the space. The choice of removable panels that Fish tears off through the play was fantastic. Because I am conceivably not a metaphor fiend I had to ask the directors to explain the ideas in children’s terms. Pereira explained that the interchangeability of the panels implied that the submarine isn’t really functioning and the artifice of all these doohickeys is just part of the facade and hollow space in which the characters exist. The lighting was effective in underlining the ideas already found in the set, and through dimming, brightening and isolating lighting at certain moments the claustrophobia and tension was deepened. I should mention that I disagreed with some of the more figurative use of lighting in the play. The massive splash of blood red lighting when Frank cuts his finger was an unsubtle blip. I would have also liked the big set piece of the window that showed the audience the shifting waters to have been highlighted and used more than it was. Given the possible symbolic properties of a window (of hope, the outside world) it felt a tad underdeveloped.

This play reaffirms the idea that Freshblood deserves to be in the WAC. That student written theatre can effectively use the Studio space, without it feeling gargantuan or overly sparse

This is all to say, yes I may have small qualms ,but this is damn good theatre. This play reaffirms the idea that Freshblood deserves to be in the WAC. That student written theatre can effectively use the Studio space, without it feeling gargantuan or overly sparse. This is what I call a triumphant foray back in the WAC. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I hear some sea shanties calling my name.