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29 October 2025
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3***1/2
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For the audiences who watch ‘Salt’ it is unlikely to have seen anything like it before and that is the best of theatre, when it creates something so far from the very well beaten track. For a play set by and on the sea, watching it in a theatre which is set beside it almost makes you feel to can smell the brine and the fish scales which the play portrays.
Set on the East Norfolk coast in the latter half the 18th century the story of Widow Pruttock and her son Man Billy, who live off the harvesting of herrings, is dirty, raw, bestial and sexual. Man Billy continually wants to break away from his parent, but she holds a power over him which he struggles to shake-off. With the arrival of the mysterious, siren-like Sheldis, Man Billy’s life is thrown into confusion as she draws him away from his mother, much to the Widow’s consternation. There are threads of the tale of Oedipus throughout with the obsession of blood, death and religion emphasised throughout. The story builds to a Sophoclean climax of tragedy and release as those who live by and for the sea suffer from it in the end.
Presented in the round – and a proper circular round edged by a thick rope – the play is augmented with songs and chants; from the boisterous to the ethereal, accompanied by a percussive soundtrack of stamping feet or simply tapping on a tin can with a knife. There is a ritualistic atmosphere throughout the play, a mystique and underlying sense of unease and tension.
With just three performers, this intense piece of theatre requires them to throw themselves into the action wholeheartedly and they do just that, brilliantly well. Emily Outred is excellent as the Widow; stern-faced and obsessive throughout – particularly about her son. Mylo McDonald has enormous power in his performance and when singing provides stunning underscoring to the action at times. The strange and dangerous Sheldis is given an edgy, dangerous quality from Bess Roche. The trio are outstanding and their sharp choreographed movements throughout are evidence of an incredible connection both to the material and to each other.
Played with broad regional accents feels enormously authentic, but it is here where the main issue arises. Yes, an audience should sometimes have to work in the theatre, it makes it invigorating, involving and satisfying, but when the words are obscured by dialect to this extent, the listener struggles to engage in the storyline from the off. It is not unlike watching Shakespeare – the ear and brain need to adjust, but there is rather more familiarity with the language of the Bard. So, for much of the first half, while the play is visually very arresting, the storyline isn’t as clear as it could be and the richness of the text is somewhat obscured; performances in the round, where the actors speak their lines multi-directionally, are rather more susceptible to lines not being heard and so the issue is compounded somewhat by accent and the language used.
Undoubtedly Beau Hopkins has created something highly original; it is full of impact, invention and edge, but there is a certain lack of clarity which leaves the audience desperately wanting to have heard more.
That all said, this production by Contemporary Ritual Theatre is one of the most mesmerising pieces of theatre I have seen in a long time and it is well worth looking out for ‘Salt’ and anything further they may produce to witness drama which draws the audience in to a different world so effectively.
Cast:
Widow Pruttock – Emily Outred
Man Billy – Mylo McDonald
Sheldis – Bess Roche
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Creatives
Writer & Director – Beau Hopkins
Composer & Musical Director – Lucy Farrant; L J Hope Productions
Movement Director – Lucy Cullingford
Lighting Design – Tim Tracey
Costume – Amanda Harrold
Photography – Peter Morgan
A Comtemporary Ritual Theatre Production
