Review: PORT CITY SIGNATURE, The Hope Theatre

Port City Signature brings together a first-rate cast of four, in an edgy unravelling of a premeditated crime. The play is a clever imagining by writer and director Nathaniel Brimmer-Beller, alongside fellow Director Phoebe Rowell John, and is produced by Black Bat Productions. The script is sharp, astute and invitingly enticing. With influences of Hitchcock’s film-noir Strangers on a Train, the spirit of the piece is tense, but adds a playful twist.

Set in a sleepy seaside town pub, next to a train track, we are introduced to a mysterious newcomer, a pub Landlady with a secret, a pub regular with a big plan, and a menacing, sadistic Sheriff. Starring Meg Clarke, Katherine Lea, Paddy Echlin and David Carter, the cast is incredibly strong and compelling.

The story is tightly-wound as the characters ‘navigate their shifting alliances in the middle of the night in a seaside pub.’ The unravelling of the characters needs and interests are taken at a leisurely unhurried pace, expanded upon and deliciously descends into reckless leaps and bounds.

As the minutes pass, the arrival of the train is integral to the newcomer, set on escaping the circumstances which present themselves. Particularly strong is the performance by Paddy Echlin, the perfect mix of charismatic, reassuring and unnervingly convincing as the regular.

The set is additionally cleverly compact with a charming public call box, which uses the space well.

Although timeless, the plot mixes the past with hints of modern life and infuses with nostalgia to intoxicatingly make the strange appear familiar and the familiar appear strange.

Port City Signature is a timeless, tense and tenacious tale of seaside noir with a strong cast and playful thrills.

Port City Signature is at The Hope Theatre until 14 October 

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