Theatre

The Scurvy Ridden Whale Men

Oran Mor, Glasgow

Mary Brennan

two stars

There are harrowing tales aplenty – some fact, some fiction – about Scottish mariners who signed up in the 19th century (and in truth, for decades afterwards) to crew the whaling ships bound for Baffin Bay and the icy reaches of the Arctic Ocean.

In Steven Dick’s three-hander, The Scurvy Ridden Whale Men – premiered as part of A Play, a Pie and a Pint’s celebratory 500 season – there are flashback scenes where the crew of the doomed Viewforth are seen slowly succumbing to the freezing temperatures, starvation and scurvy.

The vessel is being crushed by the surrounding ice: only two men – the conscience-stricken Captain Reid and callow young lad Peter – will be rescued. But, as Dick’s plot would have it, there appear to be more Awful Dangers lurking on-shore when they fetch up in Mrs Humphrey’s house-cum-hospital in Stromness, Orkney.

This is where – despite all clearly committed hands piling in, on deck – this play founders on the rocks of heavy-handed comedy, over-egged religious fervour and a last-minute twist in the narrative that suggests Mrs Humphrey is no Florence Nightingale nor indeed a fisherman’s friend...

It’s true that Mrs Humphrey doesn’t want her recuperated patients to leave, especially if they intend going back to whaling. Janette Foggo has the wifie’s traits off pat: a nippy sweetie, delivering doubts and cynicism, when Peter (Ronan Doyle) brings his recently acquired faith in the Almighty into every exchange – and she’s a decidedly girlish flirt when attempting to make the Captain (Billy Mack, providing the necessary depths of survivor’s guilt) into a landlubber and her bidie-in.

The cast negotiate the recurring troughs valiantly but the histrionic stushie over Peter’s missing bible is over-stretched, with Doyle, and the character, painted into a gibbering, raving corner. It founders, folks – Peter’s gossipy suspicions about the true fate of Mrs Humphrey’s dead kin are merely red herrings with no meat on the bone.