Further Than The Furthest Thing, Young Vic
Performed in the round, this delicate and acutely felt drama draws you in with music, excellent lighting and the use of a cloth as the sea. Something isn’t right on the island — a change in the water has been noticed by Bill (Cyril Nri). Francis (Archie Madekwe) has also returned — looking and sounding very different and with a South African factory owner in tow. He has plans for a factory…on the island…
This is a really heavy drama, with so much to think about that it was fascinating to see many of the audience at the end sitting, thinking, chatting or simply stunned and dazed. The themes — the treatment of indigenous peoples — are huge, and yet this isn’t a doom and gloom drama. Using the characters, we are drawn into their lives, the horrific exploitation they face and how they use their own strength and traditions to find the truth and seek to return home. It’s also about culture clash, even language nuances — the way we interpret things (and others) through our social constructs, and how we can ‘other’ others so easily, trampling or overlooking their wishes. Even time and how we meet and interact comes into play — with needing to talk as and against appointment diaries…
Like real life, much is left unsaid, unexplained — we are left to add our own stories and interpretations in. The subtly makes this exquisite to watch. and also both moving and painful. Bill is happy in life with Mill (Jenna Russell). There is a comic moment as Mill carefully collects eggs for them all and they drop them, only for the factory owner, Mr Hansen (Gerald Kyd), sharp suited and with complete disregard the preciousness of their food gift, to try to run out leaving it almost uneaten. Values and communication are exposed starkly in one act — and also misunderstanding and miscommunication. Francis is traumatised by his time working in the factory — laughed at, mocked for his accent and bullied, and yet, he really wants to fit in, and be modern. We see it in his clothes, his switching between accents and coloquialisms, languages, even body language. Meanwhile the factory owner dazzles with ‘magic’ tricks — although these are smoke and mirrors. It reminded me horribly of the beads used to trade in the enslavement of people, and similarly, brass goods.
Most of all we see it in his encounter with Rebecca (Kirsty Rider), who is very, very pregnant — hinted at by Mill (but never said), perhaps they were meant to be married. Perhaps everyone thinks that the child is Francis’s. As the performance builds, it turns out that the island is volcanic and serendipitously the factory owner agrees to evacuate the small community there. Rebecca gives birth during the eruption — erupting herself almost, and in her anger and pain, explains to Bill exactly how she got pregnant. The post-birth is horrific and seems to ruin Francis and Rebecca’s potential marriage.
We then move to an urban factory where the former islanders are now in uniform, making jars, and living in substandard, damp housing — mourning their subsistence farming way of life. They’re also being fed lies — having been told that a volcano destroyed their island, this turns out to not be true. They can go back, potentially (and they’re going to use the media to get there if they have to). Francis is factory controller — remote, distant and patronising. Bill’s curiosity and bewildered overwhelm at being given a system of pumps or perhaps a boiler to control, with panels of buttons rends the heart. Mill and Rebeca work together to plan their way out to the island; Mill attempts to negotiate with the factory owner — friend to friend and share the revelation about the island community — which she plans to share with the media. Which makes us think deeply about how colonised remote communities are treated by their ‘mother countries’ when global wars intervene.
After an industrial accident, we see Bill is dead, returning to his ancestors and Mill’s mourning on Bill’s funeral day is pitiable and touching. The taking out of his wedding clothes and not wanting to talk to the factory owner on the day of Bill’s funeral are heart-breaking. However, having been too busy to truly listen to Mill, this is the day that the factory owner chooses to tell Mill that he loves her, respects her. Completely inappropriate and trampling now over Mill’s grief and wanting to mourn, total disrespect. This results in a hardening of Mill’s attitude and she and the majority of the islanders seek to leave, even when they are offered better housing (finally!) and to make their own way again.
Zinnie Harris’s play shows the dynamic shifts in character, their changing power dynamics and the ways that people fail to understand and really listen, really communicate with others. Rebecca and Francis can no longer talk to each other, and at one point, Mill and Rebecca humourously lure Francis with tea and biscuits as a leverage in communicating with the now very busy factory owner. Torn between worlds, Francis has to choose — and cannot.
Timelessly rendered, there’s so much there, that you do need to sit and take a breath afterwards. Nothing is straightforward — it’s untidy, unresolved, unfinished — we have to fill in the gaps, and it’s incredibly sad and yet hopeful. Mill’s dignity is immense (she turns into a trade union negotiator almost); Bill’s curiosity and Francis trying to work out who he is and where he belongs. I wish that Rebecca had not done what she did, although so much is done to her too. Forgiveness and redemption there is not — nevertheless we see indigenous peoples as people, thinking, choosing people and feel the plight of their communities.
Intertwined are a lot of secrets in this play and it’s taut and tense as a result. It’s hard to feel sympathy for Rebecca for much of the play, although Mill shows us Rebecca’s humanity again — shocked and then pleased when Rebecca hit a patronising journalist who was trying to get her insider knowledge on the dark secrets of island life, as well as portraying her as stupid. Lots of consider about representation here too.
The staging is very minimalist, but that links to the timeless element. Fishing is hinted at with the islanders rubber boots and tough, weather proof clothing. The factory owner seeking cray fish to can is made human through Gerald Kyd’s acting, and you can start to compare the islanders factory lives with the harshness and disconnection faced by other communities — the Windrush generation, the Kenyan Asians, even Afghans, Ukrainians and Syrians. Still thinking it all through….
Based on Tristan da Cunha — Wikipedia
