SJT & Live Theatre: The Story of All At Sea

We're really excited to be working alongside Newcastle's Live Theatre on All At Sea, Alison Carr's gripping story of that infamous canoe man case.

Live's Artistic Director Jack McNamara chats about how the play became a co-production with the SJT.

At Live Theatre, plays come to us in many forms. Some are presented as ideas, outlines or vague notions. Some are finished scripts, more often than not requiring a fair bit of work and rework. Alison Carr’s play was something different altogether. The play emerged so fully formed, so sure of is own voice. Even on the page it seemed primed to meet an audience.

We shared All At Sea and a number of others with the wider staff team, so people from every department could feed in their views. It received everyone’s vote hands down.

It was a story people recognised – the infamous ‘canoe man’ insurance scam. Man pretends to be drowned at sea so his wife can claim the insurance. Spoiler: it didn't go to plan.

Yet despite this factual basis, the play was so clearly its own thing. The excitement of it was less about the news story and more about how the dramatic tension and relationships so expertly build in Carr’s writing. The skill involved in taking a known story and making every second of it feel unexpected is genuinely staggering. 

I sent the script to Paul Robinson (our SJT Artistic Director!) and he immediately said ‘let’s do it’. As the previous head of Theatre 503 in London, he has a nose for genuinely great new writing. And not only did he say yes, but, such was his belief in it, he programmed it into their significantly larger main house. All hail new writing on a big stage!

At Live Theatre we love writers and makers, of course, but we also love actors. And one of the best tests of any script is that it has parts that actors really want to play. The two parts in All At Sea are both roles of a lifetime. Some people think there are too many two-handers out there, but with parts this good, you don’t need anyone else on stage.

We knew we had to match such surgically precise writing with an equally precise director. Maria Crocker (from the North East yet currently taking London by storm) was just the person. Her forensic work on Dogs on the Metro for us last year was a masterclass in tension and character study.

And yet for all its criminal inspiration, All At Sea is also extremely funny. How could such an outrageous example of human behaviour not be? If we push past the news headlines, this is ultimately a story about human beings, pushed to a limit, trying to keep their heads above water. The action they take is absurd. But so is the world they are trying to stay afloat in...

All At Sea runs at the SJT from 16 - 31 October. You can buy tickets from £10 here, call Box Office on 01723 370 541 or pop in next time you're passing.