There’s something beautiful about an actor returning to direct a pivotal play in their career, coming full circle and all that. While I can’t speak for the quality of Sara Wiseman’s performance in Silo’s 2004 production of Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, she brings a deep understanding to the characters in her directorial debut that suggests she was probably brilliant.

Described as a Bronx retelling of the Beauty and the Beast, the play features the lonely souls of Roberta (Jodie Hillock) and Danny (Frank Borrell) who meet at a quiet bar. They’re not immediately likable characters, often opting for rudeness, anger and bitterness as their primary modes of communication. They’re the kind of people you wouldn’t want to bump into on the street. But they’re also startlingly real … [More] 

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John Patrick Shanley is one of the most famous playwrights I’d not previously known of by name, despite having seen a couple of his critically acclaimed screenplays. This early two-hander from 1983 is a quintessential sample of a classic American character study à la Williams or Mamet, observing the frank, sometimes volatile conversation between two broken specimens of society’s underclass.

In her programme statement, Sara Wiseman declares a long-held affection for this particular work, even simply as it reads off the page it would seem. She and the cast’s handling of the material is appropriately acquiescent to the raw, fly-on-the-wall realism necessary for the characters to resonate, as indeed they do.

Jodie Hillock enters first as Roberta, in a fetching orange short sleeved mini dress, ordering a red wine and choosing one of the establishment’s many vacant seats. Frank Borrell appears immediately afterwards as Danny, clad in typical blue collar clobber with slicked back greaser-style hair. He gets his jug of beer and sits at the table next to Roberta’s, whereupon they each spend a few moments furtively regarding one another before he breaks the ice to ask for a pretzel.

The ensuing conversation is alternately defensive, inquisitive and downright vitriolic as the pair navigate the minefields of each other’s damaged minds and souls. He’s violent, she’s bitterly cynical; they both hate people, themselves in particular, yet are contrarily drawn to one another through their shared misanthropy.

Bearing out Wiseman’s endorsement of Shanley’s script, details of the narrative are more effectively revealed in the course of the play than any written summary would accomplish. Over three consecutive scenes Roberta and Danny allow themselves to soften just enough to get closer than either has ever let themselves be with another person. The abrupt conclusion is hardly one of fairy-tale transformation, but we’re left with a distinct glimmer of hope and sense of relief in knowing that two narrow, claustrophobic lives have been broadened, however slightly or briefly.

At times I’ve been somewhat bemused by various companies’ choices to produce overseas works over arguably ‘more relevant’ local stories. That said, with such pointed explorations of the human condition as this, the issue is rendered moot; what Danny and Roberta are dealing with are universal dilemmas, their definitive upper-New York surroundings conversely providing us a window into our own points of pride and frailty in that magical way precisely placed stories are wont to do. Indeed, the specific idiom of their insular world is likely to be far more relatable than any attempt at transposition could achieve.

It also seems appropriate to briefly address the related discourse around accent pronunciation in local productions of foreign works. Borrell and Hillock are pretty bang-on with the broad Bronx NY Italian vernacular, about 90-95% accurate to my ear. Some people are quite fussy about authenticity, complaining that a less than perfect accent pulls them out of the play’s world. Again, I’m personally more attached to characters’ inner truths; as long as this is believably expressed the precision of their exterior affectations are secondary. 

Also in my experience, peoples’ accents frequently vary even within the same locale, often even among siblings, so a stereotypically ‘perfect’ one can seem less genuine than one with supposedly unusual components, particularly when it’s at the expense of the aforementioned emotional integrity. By this metric the duo fairly excel in their mission to draw us into their dark, all-but hopeless lives of bad choices made under mentally unstable conditions, ultimately acknowledging that redemption and hope can be possible, however improbable it may be statistically or otherwise. 

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