Belfast – Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Belfast is available via online via the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Player.

Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Part of the impressive body of work online for this year’s Festival Fringe, the highly respected Nuworks from Australia presents a compelling work taking the audience from the launch of Titanic right through to The Troubles in Belfast in a visceral explosion of creativity.

Setting the piece in and around the Harland and Wolff shipyards, David Dunn’s design and direction create the heat, danger and fulsome noise of the shipyards. The hot metal the men work with is echoed in the hot metal of the opening rock number, showered by welding sparks.

The famous cry of “Not even God could sink the Titanic” at her launch begins the exploration of the so-called curse of the Titanic. As a sinister mood falls across the ensemble, the differences between the workers begin to appear: many are cold, starving, suffering while others seem less afflicted.

Sectarianism takes hold: the chasm between the Unionist Protestants and the Catholic people begins as a crack in the workforce that expands on and on until it becomes the birth of “The Troubles” that beset Northern Ireland for many, many decades to follow.

Through the lens of Arthur’s story (a sort of “Everyman”, sensitively played by Nick Walter), we see how a fair-minded man (who just happens to be Protestant) struggles for fairness in the workplace, free from the labels of religion. He sees all too clearly that allowing the dog-eat-dog social stand-off suits the employers, ‘the bosses’, who never have to address the poor housing offered, the low wages, the punishing conditions that incapacitate and even kill so many hard-working men.

The dissonance of the social drama against the hard rock musical numbers is thrilling – the visceral energy and passion to survive is palatable.

As the work decreases in Harland and Wolff, the Catholics in the workforce are the first to be paid off. This is expressed through the tension between Rory (a young father, played by Mark Howard) and ‘Deaf as a Post’(Andrew Rance) and Mr Ferguson (Marc Testart). We also hear from women on both sides of the division as their beliefs are formed by their menfolk, spreading the prejudices beyond the workplace.

There is shock value here in the playing of loyalist anthems such as ‘The Sash’ – when this production is allowed to travel out from Australia, its effect will be momentous. The sectarian way of life in certain parts of the UK will be directly challenged through this show.

A parallel plot concerning Arthur’s son and a young English soldier as they become firm friends through football, is a device to examine the escalation of The Troubles in Belfast. There is an air of inevitable tragedy in their friendship and the increasing complexity of the musical score echoes the increasing divisions in society.

The videography of this online production uses many techniques to layer images of the ‘live’ action with the imagery from archive footage of the bonfires, the tanks on the streets, the launching of ships that give the work its strong sense of place.

This is Belfast – a moral tale that will stand the test of time.

This is Belfast with a lesson to be learned.

This is Belfast – an extraordinary piece of theatre

Fiona Orr