There can’t be many true stories which sound more like the plot of a dark comedy than that of John and Anne Darwin.
The ‘Canoe Man’ saga has already spawned books, documentaries and television drama, most notably ITV’s The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe, but Alison Carr doesn’t attempt another retelling here.
In All At Sea, she takes its irresistible central premise – a husband hiding in his own home while the world believes him dead – and lets fiction take over.
Here the couple are Colin and Deborah, played by Phil Corbitt and Sarah Belcher, whose spiralling debts prompt Colin to fake his death, leaving his supposedly grieving widow to maintain the deception.
Corbitt brings swagger, frustration and an increasingly unpleasant edge to Colin, but it is Belcher who gives the play its emotional complexity.
She is excellent as a woman being pulled in competing directions: terrified by what they have done and buckling under the strain of sustaining the lie, while also experiencing unexpected flashes of freedom as her life as a ‘widow’ takes her beyond the confines of their marriage.
The dialogue is tight and believable, with sharp wit woven throughout, while Maria Crocker’s direction keeps the 90-minute production moving.
The succession of short scenes creates an appealing energy, but the fragmentation comes at a cost.
Carr introduces a shifting balance of power within Colin and Deborah’s marriage – his isolation and growing need for control set against the possibilities beginning to open up for her – without always allowing them enough space to gather dramatic weight.
Individual moments land, but the cumulative effect isn't quite as powerful as it might be.
Elsewhere, a nostalgic monologue about a teenage holiday triumph feels slightly out of step with the rest of the play. Presumably intended to offer another glimpse of the person Deborah was before this marriage and this mess, it interrupts rather than deepens our understanding of her.
Hannah Sibai’s set paints a picture of straightforward suburbia, complete with the temperamental under-stairs hiding place where Colin disappears when necessary, while Catja Hamilton’s lighting and Roma Yagnik and Ziad Jabero’s sound steadily build a sense of unease.
If there is one practical question which occasionally nags, it’s how all the shouting and loud music and/or karaoke duets go unnoticed in what appears to be a residential neighbourhood. I live in a Victorian terrace where next door has been known to shout “bless you” after a particularly enthusiastic sneeze.
Then again, when the true story involves a supposedly dead man secretly living in the bedsit next door to his wife, with a hole behind a wardrobe providing access, perhaps plausibility isn't the hill to die on.
As Crocker tightens the screw towards a grim conclusion, All At Sea heads into considerably darker waters, with Carr’s sharp writing and two excellent performances carrying us there.
All At Sea runs at Live Theatre, Newcastle until October 10 before transferring to the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough from October 16-31.