The Ship

Imprisonment, isolation and a cruise ship are the ideas behind the new dance performance and theatre production by Do Theatre. Formed in 2021, they have since travelled around Australia winning audiences and accolades for their enthralling theatrical shows.

Their new show The Ship is based on a thriller novella titled The Royal Game written in 1941 by Stefan Zweig, set during the occupation of Austria by Nazi Germany. This spine-chilling reinterpretation is set in 1943 aboard an ocean liner sailing from Shanghai to the Southern Hemisphere.

A performing sprite-like narrator (Yanjun Chen), with haunting song-like whispers, introduces us to a harrowing tale about two chess experts. One is the renowned world Chess Champion known as the solitary eccentric Czentovic (Fini Lui), an orphaned peasant whose talent was discovered by chance by a clergyman. While Dr B (Yuan Lu) was an accountant who managed money for the very wealthy; he’s now a flailed and recovering imprisoned victim, who was tortured by the Asian Secret Police organisation.

On the ocean liner, the gregarious captain (Tony Zhang) spots the chess champion and challenges him to a match. Czentovic an arrogant, greedy naïve genius will only play for a high sum, the captain pays in order to boast in revelry.

Dr B sees a crowd of people around a chess board. He can see the captain is at a loss and offers moves that win him the match. Dr B is then set up against Czentovic to play a match, but he is reticent as he has never played a chess game in his entire life. Our sprite-like narrator relays a flashback story, and we are taken back to a time when Dr B was a working civilian, then held captive in a detention prison where he was interrogated for crimes he did not do. Heightened mime-like dance and dramatic performance brings to question how he came to be a chess expert and the inane brutal tactics of the secret police.

The two locations shift effortlessly as the story within the story unfolds; the five performers take on dual roles and together set up their impeccably crafted scenes with rotating dollies moved meticulously while in performance, only to heighten the dramatic tension such as the mesmerising chess game at sea and the hideous torture scene in prison.

The flawless choreographed torture scenes, performed in slow motion, delivered with die hard conviction by the actors, convey the unjust evils of interrogation. This show is a seamless execution of a brilliant story that provides masterful cutting-edge performance, offering an emotional and thrilling experience for the audience.

This is a multilingual production with hyper real visual components that are intrinsically part of the multi-layered production, evoking a romantic gothic atmosphere encapsulated by gossamer fabric hanging from the ceiling used to project sepia coloured imagery of old Shanghai, the ports and the dark mysterious ocean, cleverly interspersed with English surtitles during the more dramatic sequences. The music varies from traditional Chinese music to haunting ambience and sounds that exude suspicion and intrigue.

The Ship is a truly amazing Fringe show, put together by an impeccably talented cast and team under the direction of Fini Lau and produced by Sally Chen.

Flora Georgiou