Brighton Fringe 2026

As the Winds and Waters Are

Zealous Bee Theatre

Genre: Drama

Venue: BN1 ARTS CENTRE

Festival: Brighton Fringe

Low Down

Review

The action unfolds in the black-box theatre at BN1 Theatre School. The stage is arranged as a drawing room from another era: a couch, a tea service, a carefully composed domestic interior. A drawing room window for characters to look out of and deliver a reflective monologue as in keeping with the style. The setting immediately evokes a particular theatrical tradition, recalling the old maxim: learn your lines and don’t bump into the furniture.

Yet this is no ordinary drawing room. It feels more like a waiting room for ghosts. A place where lives, separated by decades and novels, have been gathered for one final conversation.

One by one Hamilton’s creations arrive carrying the burdens of their imagined lives. Though they originate from different books and different periods, they are united by geography. Brighton. Hove. Shoreham. The coastline itself becomes the play’s connective tissue; and as the evening unfolds, I found myself less interested in the mechanics of the premise than in the landscape it evokes.

Brighton emerges as a map of longing and social aspiration. The Palace Pier, the West Pier, hotels, boarding houses, and beach bungalows become markers not only of place but of class and identity. Every location carries an invisible social code; one rooted in the class structures of British society that persist today, albeit in altered forms.

Class hangs over the play like sea mist.

One begins to understand how deeply geography, status and convention were intertwined in the Britain Hamilton observed. Certain roads belonged to certain people. Certain ambitions belonged to certain classes. The divisions are rarely spoken about directly, yet they shape every interaction. What fascinates me about Hamilton’s world is that nobody appears entirely free. His characters are subliminally imprisoned by desire, status, unrealised ambition and obsessions they cannot relinquish. Everyone is reaching towards something just beyond their grasp.

The script avoids treating these figures as literary curiosities. Instead, it allows them space to reveal the disappointments and longings that define them. What emerges is less a celebration of Hamilton’s fiction than an exploration of recurring emotional patterns: aspiration, loneliness, self-deception and regret.

The production retains many of the conventions of traditional drawing-room drama but operates rather differently. Instead of building through a sequence of dramatic confrontations, it unfolds largely through interconnected monologues. Characters recount memories and reflections, intersecting when their emotional landscapes and locations briefly overlap.

The drama is largely personal and internal.

This is especially evident in the aspiring golfer whose life has been shaped by frustrated ambition and romantic disappointment. Beneath the manners and anecdote lies a simmering sense of failure that threatens to curdle into violence.

Throughout the evening, meaning resides less in what is spoken than in what remains unsaid.

At times, however, the structure becomes elusive. The play resembles a patchwork assembled from multiple novels, lives and perspectives. While this creates moments of rich association, it can also make the theatrical framework difficult to follow. As someone unfamiliar with several of Hamilton’s characters, I occasionally lost sight of who belonged to which fictional world.

Part of the challenge lies in the treatment of time. Characters from different decades are brought into the same theatrical present, yet the distinctions between their respective periods are not always clear. Greater attention to these temporal shifts could strengthened the production’s connective tissue.

Yet perhaps confusion is not entirely inappropriate in a work concerned with remembrance.

Memory rarely behaves like a well-made play.

It wanders. It circles back. It lingers over details.

A room.

A pier.

A hotel.

The sea.

Gradually the fragments accumulate into something larger. I was left reflecting on how we as humans are simultaneously psychological, physical, biological, cultural, social and historical entities. The recurring references to different parts of Brighton left me thinking about the routes people travel throughout their lives. The same streets. The same seafront. The same pubs and cafés. The same hotels. The same journeys repeated by thousands before them.

It is as though generations tread identical paths. Like spirits following well-worn tracks and behaviours. Like a thousand souls walking the same road towards the grave. The sea witnesses all of it.

One image associated with Ernest Ralph Gorse lingered long after I left the theatre. Gorse recalls placing mice in bathwater and watching them struggle to swim until they were close to exhaustion. The anecdote is disturbing not simply because of the cruelty involved, but because of what it reveals about the pleasure some people take in power and control. The image resonates beyond the character himself.

Hamilton’s world is populated by those struggling against circumstance while others observe from positions of relative security. Some struggle. Others watch.

Perhaps that is why the image remains so potent. It speaks to the ways power can become insulated from consequence, protected by wealth, influence, social standing or simple brutality. Seen from this perspective, Gorse becomes more than a villain. He becomes a warning. A reminder of how easily human beings can become spectators to the suffering of others.

There is something quietly ominous about that thought. Particularly now.

In the end, As the Winds and Waters Are feels less like a conventional play (despite its mise- en-scene) than a meditation on remembrance itself. Hamilton’s characters look back across their lives while their creator prepares to leave his own behind.

The sea remains their common witness.

A place where memory gathers and disperses like the tide.

A place where all stories eventually return.

And where, for a moment, the living and the dead might sit together and watch the horizon.

Performances and Direction

Writer-director Zoé Badovinac takes on an ambitious challenge, bringing together characters from different Patrick Hamilton novels and allowing them to inhabit a shared theatrical space. The production demonstrates a clear affection for Hamilton’s work while capturing the emotional restraint and social atmosphere that run throughout his writing.

Ian Angus Wilkie delivers a measured and quietly compelling performance as Patrick Hamilton. Never overstated, his portrayal anchors the production with intelligence and authority.

Thomas Murphy gives Ernest Ralph Gorse a compelling intensity, capturing both the character’s charm and the unsettling darkness beneath the surface.

Katya Stylianou brings warmth, elegance and independence of spirit to Jackie Mortimer, conveying a woman drawn towards a more adventurous life while retaining a strong sense of humanity.

Andrew McGrath gives a deeply felt performance as George Harvey Bone, revealing the vulnerability, frustration and emotional turbulence of a man wrestling with disappointment.

Calon Llewelyn brings youthful energy and imagination to Anthony Charteris Forster, capturing the sensibility of a young creative mind fascinated by language, metaphor and possibility.

Collectively, the cast maintain a performance style that feels true to both the period and Hamilton’s distinctive world. Their commitment to character and atmosphere creates a production rich in longing, emotional detail and period authenticity.

Published June 2, 2026 by Rikki Tarascas