This intrepid tale of a sailing team atop the high seas spumes with good intentions. It is an against-the-odds story of the first all-female crew to attempt an ocean race – the Round the World Whitbread race of 1989-1990 – even as a sexist press scoffs at them.
Skipper, Tracy (based on Tracy Edwards, played by Chelsea Halfpenny), leads the eight-strong team, singing all the while. The production’s sails are raised in an opening scene featuring a projection of waves (good work by video designer Jack Baxter), the set itself the boat’s helm.
But the endeavour quickly runs aground. The problems are multifold: the songs composed by Carmel Dean contain plenty of harmonising but they are hollering in volume, blandly hymnal, often unmelodious bar the odd, tuneful number such as Approaching Australia. Lyrics by Mindi Dickstein are strained and expositional, as is her book. Characters speak in unconvincing ways. “I really need a scoop,” a journalist tells the team as he interviews them. “We’ve been at this for six months and no one wants to back a female team,” Tracy tells her friend, Jo (Naomi Alade), as if she doesn’t know this fact.
The songs repeatedly, needlessly, remind us that these are women at sea. Alade is a strong singer but some others wobble.
‘I really need a scoop’ … Maiden Voyage. Photograph: Pamela Raith
Under the direction of Tara Overfield Wilkinson, the action on the yacht feels beached, from interpersonal tensions, too briefly brushed across, to the drama of the competition. At the team’s most treacherous flashpoints in the water, the ensemble do little more than sway or pull at rigging. It’s way too tame, you never feel the danger.
Characters remain frustratingly unknown and actors appear wooden, perhaps as a result. The team is differentiated by little more than their accents and nationalities (nine in total, we are told). Even Tracy seems barely coloured in, with Halfpenny wearing a one-size-fits-all look of concern through the show.
Her friendship with King Hussein of Jordan (Shahaf Ifhar) and his patronage is under-explained too. He bestows a Yoda-like wisdom but what does he know about competitive yachting? There is reductiveness in his portrayal: thickly accented, he speaks of “my people” and compares Tracy’s endeavour to Bedouin life.
Meanwhile, the cartoonishly drawn all-male press who brand the team as “tarts” and “cows”, sound like they have had elocution lessons from the Artful Dodger – and borrowed some of his wardrobe too.
The cast changes into swimming costumes to celebrate the team’s triumphant moment in the contest. It is based in fact but rather than emanating empowerment, it is discomforting, with sexist newspaper headlines projected behind them.
All of it is off-kilter, over-simplified, and rather too premature a production to stage.
At Southwark Playhouse Elephant, London, until 23 August