Friday March 29, 2024
KURSK
Review

KURSK

October 12 2011

KURSK – Sydney Opera House presents
A Young Vic and Fuel co-production; Sound & Fury in collaboration with Bryony Lavery. The Studio, Sydney Opera House, 6-16 October 2011. Photo: L-R: "Sonar" Jonah Russell, "Coxswain" Ian Ashpitel, "Captain" Laurence Mitchell, "Planesman" Tom Espiner, "Navigator" Keir Charles. Co-directors: Mark Espiner and Dan Jones; writer Bryony Lavery, design: Jon Bausor; lighting design: Hansjõrg Schmidt, sound design: Dan Jones. Cast: Ian Asphitel, Keir Charles, Tom Espiner, Laurence Mitchell and Jonah Russell.

Walking into the Studio for this show is like entering another world – which is pretty much what being a submariner must be like anyway. The auditorium is transformed into a dark, mechanical beast: the audience descends into its belly. Above and around about are its ribs and viscera, dimly glowing, deep shadows, pulsing with pinpoint lights, mysterious, unnerving. At the same time, there are incongruous elements of homeliness: cosy corners, family snapshots, soft toys, pin ups; the paraphernalia of domestic life. But all this is shoehorned into nooks and crannies – the overwhelming sense of this peculiar space is of a sleeping leviathan in which human beings scurry and toil, dwarfed by its size and purpose.

The purpose, of course, is war, mutually assured destruction, brinkmanship; constant vigilance and the careful husbandry of a vessel whose weaponry could wipe out entire civilizations. Why anyone would voluntarily go to sea in a submarine is beyond the imagination of the vast majority and being immersed in the world of the submariner, via this production, doesn’t make it any more comprehensible. A way of life and work less scary or unnatural than this has yet to be devised. The presence of high technology and dangerous weaponry is overpowering, although a well-used copy of Jane’s Fighting Ships on the chart table is a sweet, frail detail.

The audience is shepherded into the submarine having been stripped of overcoats and large bags, if necessary (it’s warm in the ship and they take a dim view of you getting in the way with discarded outerwear, so be warned). It’s also not permitted to interfere with the running of the ship – no standing in walkways, gangways or other inadvertent unseamanlike behaviour. Life is strict aboard HM’s nuke sub. The effect of these set-up minutes is to leave the carefree world of life on the ocean wave behind, to quite literally immerse one’s self several hundred metres below the surface, blind and helpless. It’s very clever and very effective.

When the boat puts to sea the crew members reveal their personal lives – we get to know each one and how they operate on board and at home. There’s the new family man, bursting with pride and love for his infant daughter; the ship’s root rat is full of his lust for a bodacious new squeeze – and is clearly going to give himself a severe carpal tunnel injury if he doesn’t give his wrist a rest. The captain is a youngish man so aware of the awesome responsibility on his shoulders he can scarcely believe it, while his No.2 has seen it all, done it all and been there so many times he is mother, granddad and worldweary nanny all in one.

The boat’s mission this time out of Faslane is to monitor a Russian naval exercise in the north Atlantic and Arctic oceans; making sure the Russians don’t know they’re doing it and that the Americans don’t find out either. And along the way they have to find and photograph the top-secret running gear of a new Oscar class Russian submarine, the Kursk. Did this actually happen? It could have: we would never know because their presence in the area would have been denied in Whitehall. Which is the cat and which is the mouse? It seems to depend on whose claws are bigger and who is spotted first.

KURSK

The ingenious thing about the way Kursk is constructed and the stories told is that we all know the terrible fate that befell the Kursk and its 118-man crew. That’s a given for the audience, but for the crew of the British sub it’s in the near future but is also an unthinkable unknown. The catastrophe the men live with as the worst possible outcome of a voyage is all the worse because it happens to others – and we know it. It makes their daily grind all the more poignant as we stand among them, watching them sleeping, eating, farting, joking, wanking, teasing, showering; being fearful, bored, lonely, fed up, reprimanded, even quoting haiku and doing distance uni courses while performing high level and routine tasks as efficiently and quietly as they can.

At intervals their other lives are briefly illuminated with the delivery of “familygrams” that often seem to bring more pain than solace. Whatever happens ashore, they are unable to contribute or contact: their boat’s invisibility ensures they are even more isolated and unreachable than if they were aboard a space shuttle. At some point in the 90+ minutes in close proximity with the men and their lives some members of the audience begin to feel themselves swaying – as if they really are on a submarine – some glance about, as claustrophobia and the news that we are beneath the polar icecap takes a grip. And many more are simply rapt in the intensity of the situation and the story-telling, faces upturned and glowing in the light of navigation panels and instruments.

The rendezvous with the Kursk is thrilling, the soundscape of submarine life is all around, the tension palpable as the Russian vessel passes overhead. What happens next is known the world over, but because the audience has become so firmly embedded in the submarine life it’s sickening, shocking and scarcely bearable. At the same time, there are events occurring in the lives of our new crewmates that are as distressing because of their proximity and fleshed out humanity. Kursk is an enthralling and deeply fascinating glimpse into a way of life and lives that puts the audience in the David Attenborough seat. I wish it were an ongoing series, but I was also relieved to go ashore.

 

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