Review: Shuggy Boats at Live Theatre, Newcastle
After a decade spent shifting between novel, script and screenplay, Jacquie Lawrence’s Shuggy Boats finally docks at Live Theatre with humour, heart and a cast clearly enjoying the ride
For a play which has taken such a long and winding route to the stage, Shuggy Boats arrives at Live Theatre with a pleasing sense of ease.
Jacquie Lawrence’s debut stage play has, by her own account, existed in several other forms before docking here as a live production directed by Fiona Macpherson.
You can feel some of that history in the finished result. At times, it still has the busy, episodic energy of something shaped for screen rather than stage. But it also has what many more structurally polished plays struggle to muster: warmth, humour and a genuine affection for its characters.
Set in Tynemouth in 2021, Shuggy Boats begins with a family gathering for Maeve’s 60th birthday and the revelation that her first kiss, decades earlier on the fairground ride of the title, was not with the man who became her husband, but with another girl.
What follows is less a fierce unpicking of a life than a gently rocking series of aftershocks, as Maeve begins to confront the truth of who she is and those around her adjust, resist, grieve, joke and carry on.
That gentleness is both the play’s strength and its frustration.
There is lots to like here. Lawrence writes with huge fondness for her native North East and for the women who anchor this story. The dialogue has an easy regional rhythm and the play’s best scenes feel lived-in rather than engineered. It is full of recognisable people: blunt, funny, bruised, stubborn and loving in ways they would never think to describe as such.
At the heart of it is Phillippa Wilson, giving Maeve a lovely, measured presence. This is not a performance built around grand declarations. Instead, Wilson lets Maeve step into a new life with the calm certainty of someone who has spent decades circling the truth. It feels less like a dramatic rupture than the release of something long overdue.
It is also a joy to see Wilson, Libby Davison and Davey Johns on the Live stage. All three clearly feel completely at home, and that comfort translates into something invaluable: believability. There is a warmth and easiness between them that gives the family scenes their strongest currency.
Davison’s Ange, all sharp edges, raw grief and sisterly exasperation, is especially good value, while Johns brings Jocka a tenderness that stops him becoming a caricature of the baffled husband - and Mastermind devotee - left behind. Together, they create the sense of a family with years behind it.
The supporting cast add plenty of texture. Natalie Ann Jamieson gives Carolyn a warmth and honesty that makes her instantly recognisable, while Benjamin Storey’s Ryan could easily have tipped into broad comic type but instead finds something more interesting in the push and pull between camp performance, defensiveness, affection for his family and hurt.
The scenes between Ryan and Jocka come closest to the deeper emotional excavation the rest of the play occasionally skirts around.
Alicya Eyo’s Fingers, meanwhile, brings intrigue and a sense of possibility, though the play never quite finds enough room for her. That is true of several elements in Shuggy Boats. There are flashes of richer, knottier stories everywhere: grief, pregnancy, class, sexuality, reinvention, family duty, loneliness, prison, aspiration. But too often they pass by before they have had time to settle.
That is really the central issue. Shuggy Boats is a warm, funny and very watchable play, but it could have dug deeper. Wanting it to go further is a testament to the characters Lawrence has created. You want to know them more. You want to sit with them longer.
Perhaps that sense of compression is inevitable given the play’s development history. One can easily imagine these characters stretching more fully across a television series or film. On stage, though, the result is a work that swings between emotional drama and comedy without ever fully settling into either. Like life, perhaps, but also like a play still working out where its deepest strength lies.
Macpherson’s production keeps everything moving, sometimes a little too briskly, but she draws strong, companionable performances from the cast and makes good use of Alison Ashton’s attractive seaside-shack set.
The video cameos from Denise Welch and Si King add a bit of fun, but it is Charlie Hardwick’s appearance as Helen, Maeve’s first kiss and the woman who went on to live the life Maeve could not imagine for herself, that lands most effectively. There is an understated emotional punch to those scenes. Hardwick’s contribution is brief, but it adds a real ache to the play, hinting at the road not taken and the years lost to silence.
That feeling lingers more than some of the busier plotting around it.
Shuggy Boats doesn’t always explore its characters as fully as it might, and there are moments where greater nuance and insight feel just within reach. But it has heart, humour and a cast who make this company feel richly familiar.
Full of affection for North East lives and voices, this first stage outing offers plenty to enjoy: warmth, wit, strong performances and characters you leave wanting to spend more time with.
Shuggy Boats is at Live Theatre until March 21. Tickets from the website.