Brighton Year-Round 2025
Dan O’Brien The Voyage of the Carcass; Emily Jenkins Bobby & Amy
Brighton Little Theatre

Genre: Absurd Theatre, American Theater, Contemporary, Dark Comedy, Drama, Farce, Political, Puppetry, Short Plays, Theatre
Venue: Brighton Little Theatre
Festival: Brighton Year-Round
Low Down
Brighton Little Theatre often programmes a double bill of contrasting, contemporary one-act plays. In contrast they’ve surpassed themselves here. Dan O’Brien’s 2002 “arctic farce” The Voyage of the Carcass is directed by Jo Gatford, making her debut in this role. Emily Jenkins’ lyrical Bobby & Amy is helmed by dramatist and director Sam Chittenden of A Different Theatre, assisted by Faith McNeill. Playing till February 1st there’s a reason it’s 85% sold out.
O’Brien’s piece is for dedicated farceurs. By itself outstanding, it’s hoped by several Jenkins’ Bobby & Amy have a postlude of its own, with this team and these two young actors pitched at this moment in their careers.
Review
Brighton Little Theatre often programmes a double bill of contrasting, contemporary one-act plays. In contrast they’ve surpassed themselves here. Dan O’Brien’s 2002 “arctic farce” The Voyage of the Carcass is directed by Jo Gatford, making her debut in this role. Emily Jenkins’ lyrical Bobby & Amy is helmed by dramatist and director Sam Chittenden of A Different Theatre, assisted by Faith McNeill. Playing till February 1st there’s a reason it’s 85% sold out.
The Voyage of the Carcass
On one level the silliest thing that e’er I saw at BLT, it’s meant to be. Revived off-Broadway in 2006 it worked for farceurs with skits on Canadian identity and Britishness, enjoying a lurching niche. This production tries pointing this up. O’Brien’s tone recalls Radio 4, a Saturday afternoon comedic farce, or indeed one of their 11pm midweek shorts. As radio it can work, despite its holes. Visually it needs the specialised energy of Rik Mayle, Rowan Atkinson and friends.
Olivia Jeffrey and Joseph Bentley have rendered a fine set (designer not specified) with porthole, exit and various arctic wrought cabin surfaces with props. It’s well-lit with projections and sound design by Beverley Grover.
O’Brien’s script is well-researched, then plays with that. This Carcass was designed by an amateur with money, to slide over the ice, setting off in April 1900. What could go wrong? When their amateur-designed and led Polar expedition goes awry, they’re frozen in for seven years. Once 40-strong, only three members of the doomed SS Carcass remain — that amateur Bane Barrington (James Bennison), a buffoonish explorer who had an English Nanny; sly ship’s Chaplain Kane (Esther Draycott), a rector in drag (bearing a striking resemblance to his niece Eliza, Bane’s fiancée); and Israel or Izzie (Samuel Masters), their mute (and Canadian) first mate. Who has one aria or long speech at the end before returning as up-to-date-1907 explorer Bjorn Bjornsen.
Though there’s moments of genuine pathos, as when Barrington reads out the alternative end of the expedition, these are realised through the efforts of cast and director. On one level indeed, some of the more bizarre or deus ex machina events might be hallucinations in the white-out. Or not.
Bennison’s voice and delivery are crystal clear, though could modulate more: it’s as if he doesn’t realise how fine his projection is. He renders pathos in that last delivery dropping to a natural accent. And enjoys comic timing, also emphasising O’Brien’s weird accentuals on for instance “beloved”.
Masters is almost Harpo-like or a dumbwaiter in a Faydeau farce, he-who-gets-slapped. His part is woefully underwritten too. So when he finally experiences as Izzy an apotheosis at the Pole a fine affliction results. Contrast that with the arrival of his super-modern-1907 Bjornsen with news about Bo’sun Smythe (you need to see this) and Masters can enjoy a wholly different character for about 90 seconds.
Draycott though consistently finds some truth as both ball-breaking Eliza and Elijah, the strangely omniscient Chaplain. Draycott who’s produced some very fine work here and elsewhere, also brings calm and a sense of human cost, with a meditation on love.
This is a brave attempt by debuting Gatford and her crew. It garners laughter, though they all deserve far better than this eldritch joker of a script, that belongs if anywhere with dedicated farceurs.
Bobby & Amy
Chittenden, who also provides sound design has taken up Jenkins’ beautifully-wrought coming-of-age play. It won top Edinburgh Fringe awards in 2019, and this 70 minutes might tell you why.
What it can’t guarantee is the quality of direction and performance. Chittenden, already suffused in her own scripts like Sary, knows disturbed pastoral like few others. She’s joined here by assistant director McNeill. And with Izzy Boreham in a roll-call of very fine parts recently, and Jimmy Schofield who blew away everyone with his debut in Queers here last year, you have three simple reasons why this should tour, or be seen in London. Quite simply it’s one of the finest plays I’ve ever seen at Brighton Little. And their track record is exceptional.
Jeffrey and Bentley again supply a painted backdrop; here though in hauntingly simple pastoral ululations, a ladder and virtually nothing save an exit. They know exactly what’s required.
When 13-year-old Bobby and Amy meet, it’s the late nineties. A world we’re told of “Take That, Tamagotchis, Dip Dabs, and Pog Swaps.” It’s a sleepy Cotswold town though. Cows dot fields and the two are drawn to them and Farmer Robb. And not to his son ‘Slayer’ Slater and his nasty ‘Goats’ (viciously rendered) the girls who bully Amy as Slayer does Bobby.
These characters and many more are inhabited by the two actors who slide gender and voice without a hint of parody. Boreham inhabits Mr Patel the Pharmacist who gives Bobby a job, and Amy’s moved-on mother who had only contempt for her dead husband; and Bobby’s gentle and violently abused mother who tells him he should go to university. There’s hints of further abuse, for instance danger with Amy’s “Uncle Ryan”, though this isn’t developed. Bobby a very bright, slightly-spectrum boy (“I like numbers: numbers are safe”) is given little chance to believe in himself. And Amy’s only in the way.
Schofield is superb as a batty old communist woman who’ll have an impact much later; and hoity Mrs Harrington-Smyth, commandingly on horse from her riding-school, and various truculent or nasty males.
Bobby and Amy meet accidentally in a 600-year-old folly near Robb’s farm. They’re drawn in to the birth of one calf, Abigail. But this is 1999, and one day they’re faced with a cordoned-off apocalypse: Foot-and-Mouth. The cows begin to burn, Bobby and Amy face a catastrophe that will change their community forever. Yet surprisingly after many twists and sad turns in their own lives, they find themselves at the head of it. They ward off government and council people who have no wish to understand a way of life is being eradicated. Indeed it was reported to this writer by a DEFRA civil servant that an office cheer went up whenever another farm was closed for just £70,000.
Bobby and Amy’s mutual friendship becomes affirming; not only a solace but a defence against repeated assaults from bullying peers and mostly unsympathetic parents. It’s wrought in every inflection. The actors react to each other and to characters passing through them with a breath-taking rapport, moving seamlessly from one back to their core roles. Tenderness that evolves over time is hinted, never overstated; there’s a postlude of what has happened years on.
This production is achingly beautiful. Some stood; some had to sit down again afterwards and let others file out.
Bittersweet and heart-warming, this is exceptional theatre. By itself outstanding, it’s hoped by several this production might have a postlude of its own, with this team and these two young actors pitched at this moment in their careers.
Stage Manager/Painting Olivia Jeffrey, Stage Manager Paul Charlton
Set Painting Joseph Bentley
Lighting and Sound Design, Beverley Grover,
Sound Design Sam Chittenden (Bobby & Amy)
Lighting and Sound Operation Suse Crosby, Costumes (Carcass) Myles Locke
Photography Miles Davies
Special Thanks to Joseph Bentley, Tess Gill, Sarah Humphrey and John Marshall (‘The Cow Man”) for Props on Bobby & Amy