Theatre Review: Leviathian

A stones throw from Cardiff University, The Sherman theatre has made a name for itself with bold, new pieces of theatre. With its latest offering Leviathan, it has taken inspiration from the Scottish Oran Mor‘s theatre who they  worked with to coproduce the idea of roughing up the dusty concept of ‘dinner and a play’, and giving it a hearty twist. For your £12.50 theatre goers get a winning lineup of a play, pie and a pint. (Coffee or wine are options too, but don’t sound quite so good in the title.)

Through the year the theatre are to offer a series of new pieces of theatre with the deal, opening with the premier of Welsh writer Matthew Trevannion’s Leviathan.

Directed by Rachel O’Riordan, the play stars BBC Wales’s Gwawr Loader, Holby City’s Claire Cage and Cymru Bafta winning acress Siw Hughes.

The play centre’s on the relationships of three generations of women: grandmother, mother and daughter. The thought-provoking play seems to function on contrasts and divisions, presenting you at once with the stark realism of a valley council estate, and tumbling poetic dialogue akin to the brilliance of Under Milk Wood.

Though hilariously frank and open with dialogue that is apt and well observed,  the women are divided by secrets, bitterness and, at the plays heart, the fact that Hannah, the mother, has fallen deep into the grips of a disturbed, catatonic state.

Silent Hannah sits despondent throughout, speaking only to the audience in moments of lucid, lyrical speech that drive the drama deeper towards her dark past.
Set on their sun drenched council house lawn, Trevannion subtly invades their quiet with overlooking neighbours and a thundering train line, imbedding a sense of scrutiny and unease. Gradually and skilfully building and revealing by inches a wealth of pain and black memories.

The plays name, perhaps a little out of kilter with the thoroughly ordinary setting, reimagines the mythical beast. To Trevannion the idea of a leviathan grabbed him as a metaphor for depression, a dark lurking presence that lies beneath where “can’t understand it’s size, or quite how dangerous it is.”

Through the play strains of metaphors of motherhood, life and death, run seamlessly alongside the very human drama of separations and fears. with a play that is complex yet wholly accessible, Trevannion seems to have succeeded in the task he set himself: creating something to make people “leave moved and changed by something – ever so slightly- within a working day.”