We were given a Quest at the Victoria and Albert Museum: Find an object, and tie it to a play we’ve seen. We started at the Theatre and Performance section. I was at a loss at first. Instead of finding something there, I wandered, moving from gallery to gallery, taking photos of intriguing objects. I have a little gallery of interesting items to share here. Eventually, though, I made my way back to the Theatre area, and found my object.
This is a set rendering for Shakespeare’s Pericles, designed by Loudon Sainthill. Reading the plaque reveals the director’s vision for this version of Pericles was as a seafarer’s tale. This isn’t a massive leap to make for Pericles, where many notable moments occur at-sea. Modifying The Curious Case of Benjamin Button to be a seafarer’s tale, with a very similar set design philosophy, was a much farther leap to make. Making the set a port or docks evokes scenes of travel, contemplation, and danger at sea. It encourages the designers to use specific colors of paint and light, and use a commonly understood set of natural and human sounds to fill the world. Within those wide bounds, though, there are massively different histories of sailing to pull from, which can be seen in the differences between Pericles’ Mediterranean-inspired architectural beauty set in rocky outcroppings, and Benjamin Button’s rough-shod Cornish docks. In both cases though, the themes of change and distance, time and space, push themselves to the forefront
All of this is to say, I don’t think there will ever be an era where sets like these do not strike a deep resonance within audiences. The car is ubiquitously upsetting, and the plane is ephemeral. The train is falling out of fashion and comes with hefty thematic baggage. But the boat? Eternal. When humanity is ending, be it climate catastrophe, war, or a journey into space to become something else, we will be setting these stories on a boat of one kind or another.
Theatre in London U of A 