Into the Night review

Original Theatre Company’s Into the Night was originally due to be streamed on December 19 to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the event it portrays. But while Covid may have thwarted these plans, it remains a perfect, poignant tale for a dark winter’s night.

Based on Michael Sagar-Fenton’s book Penlee: The Loss of a Lifeboat, the production recounts the night when the entire crew of the Solomon Browne lifeboat was lost at sea attempting to save the storm-stricken Union Star, whose crew and passengers – including the two teenage stepdaughters of the captain who were there because the family wanted to be together for Christmas – similarly perished.

It’s a heartbreaking story, and one that remains a source of pain and pride to Mousehole, the tight-knit Cornish community so devastated by this loss, where the Christmas lights are still dimmed annually in remembrance. 

Using a mix of narration and dramatic re-enactment, director Alastair Whatley and writer Frazer Flintham handle this subject with sensitivity, recognising it needs no sensationalism or melodrama.

They are aided by a strong cast (including familiar faces such as Tim Treloar and Tom Chambers), clever design and evocatively deployed music. Jason Taylor’s lighting, Dominic Bilkey’s sound and Ryan Gilmartin’s projection are skilfully combined with Michael Pavelka’s set and costume design to evoke both the roaring seascape and the terrible, tense conditions in the pitching helicopter and boats struggling below it.

Yet in some ways it is the narrative segments that hit harder, as the cast gently and patiently talks us through the tale. In less deft hands, such an exposition-heavy piece could feel like a lecture, bogged down by facts and figures, technical descriptions of engines and weather. Instead, against a backdrop of fairy lights and the dim interior of a pub, the conversational style feels unforced, with the occasional stumble – Covid has meant that what we are seeing is the filmed dress rehearsal – only making the piece feel more real.

We are strangers welcomed into a circle of friends, and if their story is thick with detail, it is simply because it’s so important to them that they want us truly to understand.

It’s a deceptively simple but remarkably effective approach. The occasional glimpse of Covid-masked figures in the background solidly grounds this retelling in the now, reminding us that though these events may be historical, their echoes are still felt.

It’s particularly timely in a climate where the Royal National Lifeboat Institution faces vilification for the very thing for which it should be most lauded: crew members’ willingness to risk their own lives to save others, no matter their identity or circumstance. Into the Night puts a human face on that bravery, and reminds us of what it can cost.