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Ships
at Mylae Elizabeth Gately's play is being shown as part of the OUDS new writing festival. It was one of the runners-up and it is easy to see why. Ambitious in scope and boldly plotted, it tells the interweaving stories of a group of soldiers sailing into almost certain death at the hands of the Roman fleet. In an atmosphere of hot and claustrophobic fear, these men act out their last dramas. They remember loved ones left behind and rekindle nightmares of previous wars. Their terror and grief makes them love and punish each other. One of the hubs of the play, which the writing simply and ably portrays, is the homoerotic pull amongst the men. Some mock, some are beguiled, some turn a blind eye. The writing is most assured when gripped by this sexual charge. It wandered a little pallidly however during some of the other scenes. The acting followed a similar pattern. Though there was great chemistry between pairs, larger groups became too uniform. It was difficult to make out individual characters. Only the clean shaven Spartan, repeatedly called 'faggot' by the rest of the crew, stood out as a distinct person. Though the accents bounced off each other in a satisfying way (these were ordinary men from the many islands), the soldiers remained largely faceless. They were similarly dressed in T-shirts and stained trousers, which emphasised their youth and vulnerability. The sickly, death-freighted atmosphere of the ship was also well caught by the lighting, which drained the stage of all colour.
Thankfully, it was not necessary to have much knowledge of ancient
history to make sense of the piece. The playwright uses the background
of the first Punic war, in which the Romans routed the Carthaginian
fleet, as a basic arena in which to pit the weak against the strong.
Roman victory is a foregone conclusion. The motley crew who sail to
their doom consists of Carthaginian commanders, Libyan mercenaries,
stray Spartans and other Greeks on their way to Mylae (Milazzo) in
northern Sicily. The rest was self-explanatory, a spirited attempt
at understanding men skewered at the outer edges of endurance. |