Two English girls, adrift on a lifeboat after their ship supposedly taking them to sanctuary in Canada, is sunk by the Germans.  They have to hang on to their overturned lifeboat, Bess (Suzanne Robertson) and Beth (Isabelle Joss), as dozens of other children drown in the cold dark waters. 

They flash back to their homes in London and Liverpool, one relatively well-to-do and the other crammed, both children loved so much their parents wanted them safe when war came. 

The two excellent actors portray countless characters with energy and wit, never putting a foot wrong.  This is aimed at kids and a perfect way to teach them about wartime from a child’s perspective, but on opening night there were far more war-babies in the audience, so it was a reminiscence for them.

Quality work. 

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Lifeboat is a little gem produced by the Catherine Wheels Theatre Company from Musselburgh in Scotland. In 2002 the play won the Barclays Stage Award for the best show for children and young people.

It’s a 70-minute part true-life adventure story, part history lesson, and part memorial to the 87 children and young people who were drowned in the Atlantic on Friday 13, 1940 when a German torpedo sank The City of Benares which was taking them to Canada to escape the bombing and the possible invasion of Britain.

The play concentrates on teenagers Bess Walder from London and Beth Cummings from Liverpool, who became friends on the ship and who somehow willed themselves to hang on to a lifeboat and miraculously survive after about 19 hours in the water. Now in their eighties they remain friends and Bess married Beth’s brother.

It is an extraordinary story and it is told simply and energetically as the details of life in wartime England and the girls’ families are neatly and amusingly presented in flashback. Lighting, sound effects and some brief song-and-dance sequences which fit neatly into the play because Bess wanted to be an actress and Somewhere over the Rainbow from The Wizard of Oz is her favourite song.

Suzanne Robertson (Bess) and Isabelle Joss (Beth) complement each other perfectly. At the start I thought they were going to be a little bit too winsome but as they introduced family, officials, and even the Indian ship’s steward with immediately accessible characterizations and all with a gentle humour my fears dissipated and I was entirely won over.

This story, forcibly and cleverly told, of friendship and endurance is also a stimulating and imaginative introduction to the theatre for today’s young, breast fed on TV.
  

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Bess Walder from London was 15 and Beth Cummings from Liverpool was 14 in 1940, when their boat sank in the Atlantic. Now they are 82 and 83 respectively. And even though Lifeboat – their near-death experience as dramatised by Nicola McCartney and directed by Gill Robertson for Scotland’s Catherine Wheels Theatre Company – is primarily pitched at school children, it offers delight to any age group.

Already brought up on their Dad’s songs from the so-called ‘Great War’, the girls initially take the outbreak of WWII and the onset of the Battle of Britain in their still-innocent strides (in their skips?). "I love air raids!" Bess declares at one point, oblivious to the lives they shatter each time. Family is all, along with illicitly listened-to pop-songs and Hollywood-fuelled romantic fantasies.

Adventurous Bess wants to be an actress in Technicolor and go to Canada. Home-body Beth doesn’t want to go anywhere. But children are being evacuated to Commonwealth countries (given the use of radio broadcasts elsewhere in the show, it’s a shame they didn’t use Princess Elizabeth’s appeal on the Children’s Hour). Thus both Bess and Beth are among the 90 who board The City of Benares at Liverpool docks, on Friday 13 September 1940, for a voyage to Canada under naval escort.

It’s their mutual love of The Wizard of Oz that bonds them on board and Dorothy’s heel-clicking spell, "There’s no place like home," that becomes their life-saving mantra. Indeed it’s the line that opens the play amid sonic turmoil, as the girls sway and drift on horizontal bungy cords … The stories of who they are, where they come from and how they came to be in this position are told in fluently staged flashbacks.

It’s a German torpedo that sinks their ship the play’s core energy comes from the way their strong friendship fuels their determination to survive. For all its ‘popular theatre’ presentation style, when the high drama hits home it is given its due in truth and without melodrama.  

Adult actresses Suzanne Robertson (Bess) and Isabelle Joss (Beth) imbue their teenaged characters with an idealised optimism that these days would suggest a pre-teen phase, and act out each other’s parents and siblings with the same spirited glee.

Set and lighting designer Karen Tennent’s simple set evokes the ship’s deck mostly but also houses their homes, trains, a picture theatre and the ocean itself. Composer David Trouton’s sound design brings those old-time melodies back and fills the auditorium with powerful turbulence as required. The actresses wear head-mics that are judiciously employed when their voices are part of a bigger sound mix.

Thoroughly developed and honed in every respect (it opened in 2002 and has toured extensively since), yet still fresh and fizzy, Lifeboat packs a wallop because it is fundamentally about life, death and the human spirit. Oh, and it’s a highly entertaining history lesson too: informing the young and reminding the old.  

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