Religious extremism, from Midsommar-like cults to Medieval flagellants, is always a question of endurance. How far can you push people? To what extent will they go to find the salvation you’re offering them? Will they, for example, form a commune on a submarine, drifting in the dark depths of the ocean, far away from the safety of any landmass, to worship the abstract god they believe lives in the sea?
Such is the devotion of the followers in Divine Wave, led by an aging but still volatile Priest (Cael Maher) and his two daughters Joanna (Gaby Ward) and Laila (Emily Butterfield). The family drama – tension between the ambitious and devout Joanna, and her younger, meeker, and preferred younger sister – is the real draw of the play, the extremity of their situation sharpening the conflict into an ideological one as well as familial.
There is also ship’s doctor and Laila’s husband Matthias (Monty Fletcher), as well as Dion (Ben Hebron), the submarine engineer. The two men are having a fraught emotional affair behind Laila’s back, confined by the ‘moral’ oppression of their religion. The relationship is threatened also by a looming spectre of less human danger, as Dion, similarly to other unseen members of the community, has been made sick, either by the water or perhaps the submarine, or – as Matthias believes – the anger of the god they worship.
Even for a submarine, the situation is high pressure. As their father’s health declines, Joanna seeks to take over from him, in opposition with her more empathetic sister, who finds her fanaticism distasteful, and plays nursemaid. With the strange sickness growing in scale, Joanna and Matthias look to fall back on their faith, while Laila and Dion become more and more distanced from it, ironically growing closer in the process.
After the Priest’s death (viscerally well-acted by Maher), the action rises to a high point as disease in the lower levels of the submarine force Joanna to order that their small group abandons the community they are responsible for, shutting off access to whatever lies below them and killing anyone from the lower levels who attempt to join them. They damage the submarine in the process and are left adrift, waiting for a signal from nebulous outside forces. When one finally comes, it forces someone to take the blame for what happened.
The intensity of feeling that runs throughout the show is its greatest strength. The characters are at one another’s throats over and over, pushed to violent emotions by their isolation and fear. The most compelling drama is the push and pull between the two sisters over their father’s legacy – there are obvious considerations of the weight a religious upbringing – the expectations of moralistic good behaviour, and the competitiveness brought on by the weight of expectation.
Ward does well to make Joanne a remarkably forceful presence on stage, her frustration and ambition as tense and expressive as her later fear and desperation. Her confliction over her father’s death, and her refusal to let him see Laila despite him asking, was a well-executed and thoughtful moment of emotion.
The setting also serves to create underlying feelings of unease and threatening risk: Benji Underhill’s projections at the beginning of the play of open ocean and unspecific militaristic scenes, alongside the well-constructed and usefully malleable design courtesy of Roisin Harder, are made emotive by the size of the Contact Theatre’s space, and the gloom it allows. The complex implications of the potentially dystopian world these characters are living in are unexplored, potentially leaving the audience with some questions, but allowing the character driven narrative room to breathe.
In addition, attempts to explore the worldbuilding might have resulted in an already complex plot becoming oversaturated. As it was, the thought and depth given to each storyline were at times held back by their own intricacy.
Nevertheless, Divine Wave made for a thoughtful and thought-provoking production that took full advantage of the space it was given to present well developed and sympathetic performances with narrative clarity and catharsis.
