Review: DOGSTAR, Hampstead Theatre

Much like Daisy Hall’s Hampstead Theatre debut, Bellringers, her sophomore effort is a dark comedy involving a group of men in an isolated, geographically unforgiving setting. Instead of campanologists, this time we’re dealing with 19th-century whalers trapped in the ice, and the humour leans less towards absurdism and more towards sardonic British sitcom.

Young crew members Sam (Abdul Jalloh) and Gorey (Adam Rojko Vega) are joined by seasoned fifty-something harpoonist Babben (Justin Edwards) as the last remaining crew members on a whaling mission doomed to fail – they’re too far north to find any whales, and the captain is drunk somewhere offstage.

With the first mate on the brink of death, the stage is set for resentments to come to the fore, but this is less a Shakespearean power struggle than an HR meeting gone wrong. On this ship a confession of violent crime is more likely to be met with pedantic debates over semantics than active condemnation. “You’ve got to stop asking people that,” replies one character drily to another wondering about their impending death.

But this is still the world of Moby-Dick, and conditions are harsh. The themes here border on the Homeric, about as existential as an office caper can get – this group of co-workers vies with grief, personal ambition, the lack of economic opportunity on land and, ultimately, the choice to sacrifice oneself for the greater good. Amid all this, it is an achievement that the tone remains decidedly unpretentious. Lucy Morrison directs the cast in a compressed style that seems made for single-camera TV, and the pacey, regional accent-led dialogue resists any period stylings.

All of the dynamics between individual members of the trio are well-considered, and some subtle, thoughtful acting performances keep the snarky one-liners from taking over. Rojko Vega is dour and cynical as Gorey but also deeply sympathetic in his frustrations and moral dilemmas, while Jalloh shines as the 17-year-old Sam, a heady mixture of insecurity and childish defiance. Babben is something of a mentor to both men, but Edwards is sure to offset any sense of grandeur with a marked lack of sentimentality towards Sam and Gorey.

We have to go through some farce to get there – even when the stakes are raised, there are still some slapstick-infused failed murder attempts – but Dogstar does eventually reach a greater sense of the macabre. The crew (Sam especially) suffer from scurvy-induced hallucinations of their ship’s wealthy owner, and begin to see the vision as their means of salvation. In these scenes, Holly Ellis’ lighting and Anna Short’s sound design do much of the heavy lifting in conjuring up a world outside the confines of the ship, that is both sinister and enticing to the men.

Sometimes the desire to write a sitcom gets in the way of Hall’s broader dramatic ambitions. The story is tightly structured around a few major deaths, but after some of these there’s a distinct lack of urgency in how the characters immediately return to joking around. Still, Dogstar deserves credit for its originality, in how it walks a tonal tightrope few could pull off.

Dogstar plays at Hampstead Theatre until 5 December