Plastic Beach

Plastic Beach teeters between hypnotic and stupefyingly dull, mostly drifting towards the latter. Any audience member who neglects to read a plot précis in advance of the show will spend at least half an hour wondering what on earth is going on – if anything is going on.

Theatre with Teeth (an experimental theatre company from Exeter University) has taken the real-life story of the accidental release of 7,200 rubber ducks from a container ship and used it as a backdrop for this physical theatre piece, Plastic Beach, a story about a beachcomber’s repetitive and obsessive search for these plastic escapees.

The production is largely without speech and relies on inventive use of props and movement. A couple of chairs, a sheet and two hat stands tied together with string are made to embody a quite dizzying array of items. In one of the strongest sequences of the play, this flotsam and jetsam set of props shifts seamlessly, speedily and repeatedly between bedroom, corner shop and beach. The beachcomber, likewise, is alternately embodied by all six members of the cast. At its best Plastic Beach creates effects of great beauty from the simplest of instruments – who would have thought an illuminated rubber duck on a dark stage could be quite so exquisite?

The production may be trying to say something quite profound about how rigidity of routine can become self-defining, the individual becoming subsumed by it. But this reflection on repetitiveness is prone to feeling a bit, well, repetitive.