Burntwood prize winner, Anna Jordan loves to tell a hard-hitting tale in her plays. Her brand-new play, The Unreturning, produced by Frantic Assembly in association with Plymouth Theatre Royal, does just this in a no-holds-barred account of the harsh realities of war on young soldiers. Three soldiers, returning from three separate wars that span over 100 years of history, form the focus of Jordan’s gritty, multi-stranded script. She pulls no punches and leaves the audience numb with disbelief as she depicts the horrors that soldiers face, not only on the front line, but also upon their return home to normality. This is dealt with as wars past (World War 1), present (the war in Afghanistan) and future, set in a dystopian time and place somewhere outside of the UK.
Directed by Neil Bettles, this production has a creative energy of which every strand feels like an essential element. Frantic Assembly’s distinctive physical theatre style resonates throughout this production and the contemporary design ideas help to create a production with the slick quality one would associate more with screen than stage.
Set and projection design by Andrzej Goulding is revealed from the opening of the play as a simple shipping container, dominating the entire stage and projected images of water lashing the shores. In the opening scenes the container is revealed to be a rotating stage, with multiple entrances, rotated manually by the cast to change time and space. As the production developed, the movement of this became more rapid and helped to build to a frenetic climax of energy and immersive theatre which was magnificent to watch. The combination of this use of space, set, projections, overwhelmingly loud sound (Pete Malkin) and the signature style of Frantic Assembly's choreography; made up of lifts, fluidity and transitions, they managed to create some of the most spectacular moments of this production.
A particularly favourite moment for me was the innovative use of costume by Lily Arnold. Aside from the extremely effective design which helped characterise the soldiers, there was also an incredibly tender moment when George, the world war one soldier meets his girl on the station platform as he come home from the front line. The empty costume, carried by the other cast members, as if an empty shell was brilliantly used to snatch her from George and replace with dead and wounded soldiers. This created one of many juxtaposing images of the impact of war on the mental health of the characters.
If I had to find fault, it would only be in the third soldier’s story. The atrocities of war were handled with a tender compassion with the first two stories of soldiers past and present. Even amidst some disturbing scenes of violence and post traumatic stress disorder, there was still an empathy for the characters in their anguish. However, this empathy was much harder to place with the dystopian soldier. Jonnie Riordan had a much harder job to play this role because the script just didn’t offer him as much to relate to. However, Riordan’s still created a powerful projection of the role and some wonderfully skilful movement.
All four performers in this production held the audience with an electric energy for a full hour and forty minutes. This was a strange choice to offer no interval as there seemed to be and obvious point to break in the script, but this choice was one made by the company. Frantic Assembly has an honoured reputation amongst senior school students of Drama and so the auditorium was packed with school groups. Not surprisingly, they too were gripped for the entire production and I think that is a testament to just how good this production is.
Frantic continues their tour of The Unreturning, nationwide until March 2019.
Reviewer - Johanna Hassouna-Smith
on - 16/10/18
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