James Hadley talks about Shaky Isles Theatre, a New Zealand theatre company based in London, and its main production this year Skin Tight.

Hadley says the distinctive New Zealand tone and physical directness of the work surely prompted a few homesick pangs from Kiwis in the audience.

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Shaky Isles Theatre can claim to be the leading New Zealand theatre company based in London, and have been presenting readings and stagings of New Zealand plays in some of the city's Fringe venues since 2006.

They chose to stage Gary Henderson's Skin Tight as their main production of this year, performed by Shaky Isles' founder Emma Deakin, and company member Samuel Webster, at the Pleasance Theatre, a black box studio theatre in Islington. Ex-pat New Zealander Stella Duffy, best known for her novels, was directing, having also previously directed Kikia te Poa and Precious Things for Shaky Isles.
 
I first saw Gary Henderson's moving theatrical response to Denis Glover's poem The Magpies in the touring production featuring Jed Brophy and Larissa Matheson. Their performances - intense both physically and emotionally - left a lasting impression that it would perhaps be unfair to compare any new revival with, especially given the rose-tinting of memory. Henderson's script is aging very well, helped by the fact that it's laden with remembrances of a couple's past in 1940s Canterbury, rather than a contemporary reality.

We see Elizabeth (Emma Deakin) and Tom (Samuel Webster) in the prime of life - as they see each other - and it's only gradually that we begin to realise the depth of their mutual passion relates to a much longer-term relationship than the characters' apparent physical age might have initially led us to believe.
 
Stella Duffy's appropriately sparse production places a third performer onstage throughout: cellist Katie Brayben underscores sections of the text, adding tension to the sections of boisterous physical grappling between the lovers. Brayben is also implied as an onstage presence of the couple's absent daughter Kitty, and also interacted with directly as a woman Tom recalls flirting with.

These direct interactions slightly muddied the internal conventions of the piece in my opinion - we're experiencing the intimate, subjective reality of a couple; seeing them through each other's eyes, and three's company in that equation. But Brayben feeds strong focus into the piece throughout, making her a sympathetic onstage presence.
 
Emma Deakin is an emotionally generous Elizabeth; playful and sincere, easily arousing audience sympathies. The youthful vigour of her performance, while tempered by calculating guile as she plays with her lover's vulnerabilities, is so compelling that it outweighs the gravitas that we might also expect considering the character's real age and life experience.

Samuel Webster's Tom is a good match for her physical sparrings, Webster matching Deakin's emotional transparency as the lovers clash, confide and just about seem ready to consume each other in moments of believable erotic chemistry. Webster has a pronounced Northern English accent, which bothered me at first, in this very New Zealand piece. The character of Tom has known Elizabeth since their schooldays, so the accent seems to jar within the reality of the play - particularly when it so clearly contrasts with Deakin's accent. It did set me thinking about the rural earthiness of the piece, and how this could be compared to fellow Northerner D H Lawrence's earthy sensuality of tone... but I doubt that was the intention!
 
Director Stella Duffy has facilitated an appropriate intensity between the performers. Given the awful sightlines in the theatre for any action happening on the floor, she has wisely kept most of the physical grapplings between the lovers up off the floor, against walls, and even hanging from a ceiling beam at one point. The physical passage where a knife becomes involved between the lovers certainly amps up the intensity of their interactions - the knife's edge of love and pain. A bucket of water is repeatedly engaged in the action - water flicked and spat within conflicts, water wiping away tears, and water as the medium for a physical farewell of a lover's body in the play's poignant final scene.

This production avoided the nudity and the final appearance of the elderly Tom, seen without the rose-tinting of Elizabeth's perceptions of him, which I presume are both in the script - or have certainly been features of other productions, and the impact of the play's denouement was lessened as a result. But the emotional intensity achieved by the actors within the climactic moments of the piece certainly honoured the story, and the works distinctive New Zealandness of tone and physical directness surely prompted a few homesick pangs from New Zealanders in the audience on a dark London evening.