Writer: Tim Foley
Directors: Neil Bettles and Elle While
You can almost smell the sea as you enter the Belgrade’s B2 auditorium for Driftwood: There’s lots of, well, 
driftwood, forming a performance area, and a rippling backdrop displaying rippling images – later it will transport us to the seafront or underwater and provide surtitles – with a haunting soundscape of waves brought to us by designer Lulu Tam, video designer Sarah Readman and sound designer Lee Affen.
Estranged brothers Mark and Tiny are brought together as their father is rapidly fading. They both have very different memories of, and attitudes towards, him. Tiny has been his carer; Mark fled the family home in Seaton Carew to start a new life in Manchester. The brothers are also very different: Mark is level-headed, a good organiser; Tiny is more spiritual, more in touch with the spirits that roam the shore. Their father told them a story of a mythical figure, The Mariner, who collects the souls of the dead so that they might be at rest. Tiny completely buys in to the legend, Mark … doesn’t.
When Tiny doesn’t see The Mariner come for their father, he is disturbed and haunts the beach himself; Mark cannot suspend his disbelief. As time progresses, however, each works towards his own epiphany as they try to deal with long-suppressed feelings of guilt, betrayal and abandonment.
Jerome Yates’ Tiny is a simple soul, but, strangely, the more relatable, the more essentially human of the two. He brings a childlike openness and honesty to Tiny. James Westphal’s Mark is altogether more complex: while he seems to be in control of his emotions, Westphal makes it clear that much is going on under the apparently calm – and occasionally frustrated – exterior.
There’s plenty of physicality as two large driftwood wedges are moved to transport us around and along the beach. It’s all finely choreographed by directors Neil Bettles and Elle While to help show the passage of time. Tim Foley’s script is a triumph. It’s supremely well observed with all the hesitancies of two people seeking common ground and skirting around issues they struggle to verbalise. But it still has a poetry, cadence and weight of its own, mesmerising the audience and drawing us in. But it’s not all heavy – there are moments of lightness and humour to leaven the mix.
Driftwood is a thing of beauty and when the crisis hits, as we know it inevitably must, we all feel the catharsis it brings. It’s gentle and understated, a slow burner, which serves to increase the power of the dénouement. If there’s a criticism – and it’s a minor one – it’s that the pace sags a touch in the later stages as the end inexorably approaches.
Nevertheless, it’s well worth the effort to join Mark and Tiny’s journeys as they learn about themselves and each other.
Runs until 12 March 2025 and on tour
