REVIEW: Driftwood

Driftwood arrives at Lowry for the end of its tour to a sell-out audience, such is the anticipation of seeing Tim Foley’s latest work.

The emotional two-hander is the second play from the Bruntwood Prize winner, whose Electric Rosary was staged at The Royal Exchange in 2022.

Like that play, Driftwood too has a science fiction element, but here it is rooted much more in the stories people tell themselves to cope with life’s most uncomfortable realities.

It opens with a man being washed up on the beach of Seaton Carew in Hartlepool. Whether this figure is real or mythical is something that continues to haunt this multi-layered play that intertwines nature, society and human relationships in a swirling circle of life.

Pentabus - Driftwood — Pentabus – Driftwood

When the stage lights lift, brothers Mark and Tiny are alone on the beach. Tiny, the younger of the two, talks fancifully about burning their dad by the sea and inhaling smoke from the flames. This is our first glimpse of his wild imagination that at times takes psychotic turns as Tiny, now a fully-grown man, works through his grief.

Mark at first appears the more practical of the two, but his struggles emerge in different ways throughout the play. The first scene sees the pair reconnect after some time apart to discuss their dying father.

Tiny has never left the seaside town they grew up in and has spent the past few years caring for his ailing parent. In contrast Mark couldn’t wait to leave. For him, the place holds difficult memories of homophobic bullying and a traumatic incident involving the sea.

The sea and its surrounds are central to the story which unfolds gradually over an absorbing 90 minutes. Dead crabs washing up on the beach as the river is dredged to make way for the region’s free port adds a contemporary political element, while also metaphorically mirroring the experience of death and estrangement the brothers are wrestling with.

All scenes take place on the beach, portrayed with a simple sand-coloured stage, a couple of wedge-shaped wooden blocks and a backcloth onto which is projected images of the sea and its industrial horizon.

Creative captions of all the dialogue are projected on the filmic background. It is an interesting addition that gives a sense of watching subtitled TV while also adding extra weight to some of Foley’s more poignant lines, leaving them hanging long after the words have been spoken.

James Westphal and Jerome Yates, who played Mark and Tiny when the play was originally staged by ThickSkin Theatre and Pentabus in 2023, have an easy stage rapport that makes them believable as brothers. Returning to these characters they bring a deep emotional charge that can’t fail to move. It is good to see this play enjoying a longer tour because it is affecting and innovative theatre that deserves a bigger audience.