Caught Between Grief and Hope: ‘On Some Far Shore’ Reviewed

Fresh off the back of Our House and Macbeth, Cross Key Productions presents an original three-hander focused on the complexities of grief and young love. Produced by Madi Boutcha and Adam Peterson, the show is Louis Bennyworth’s first dalliance with the art of writing musicals. The show offers a heartfelt premise and a talented cast, and is set to move to the Edinburgh Fringe once its run in Oxford is complete.

In Oxford’s Michael Pilch black box theatre, we meet Euan in the midst of his grief, faced with the mammoth task of preparing a eulogy for Helen, his mother. The stage is set with a wooden set of ladders, mugs dotted, and half finished notes fanned across the floor in piles, the result of Euan’s inner turmoil. His girlfriend, Isla, seeks to aid him in this journey, but struggles to meet his needs whilst remembering her own. Over the course of the play, we learn more about Euan’s relationship with Helen, and in turn her relationship with Isla. We find a complex woman, at times too independent and brusque, who has raised Euan to be a man of great moral strength but also great anxiety. 

The show’s greatest credit is undoubtedly the earnestness with which it portrays grief. Thomas Perry’s performance captured the simultaneous pain, anxiety and guilt that characterises loss, and provided an engaging centre for the show. As a character, Euan seems lost, turned young again by his mother’s death. We also get to see Isla’s grief (portrayed by Katie Gill), a more subtle and shared pain, both at the death of a woman she once knew, and the impact that had on the man she loves. The most thoughtful performance of grief, however, was that of Helen herself. Nicole Palka’s astute portrayal of Helen’s willful ignorance of her own ill-health, and her decision to keep that from Euan and Isla for as long as possible is one of the heavier points of the musical, and arguably the one that stays with you the longest after curtain call. 

The production flourished in its depiction of childhood wonder and lent the play an added element of thoughtfulness. The prop department offered a visual display that invited us into the mind of Euan as he visualised his mother’s stories. As he shares these tales with Isla, the production does well to exaggerate the contrast between Euan’s childlike ignorance and Isla’s increasing discontent with the story’s overall message. 

The use of shadow, though underutilised, was effective in reminding us of the looming figure of Euan’s mother in his life, for better or for worse. It also served well in displaying the nature of memory, as her stories invaded his brain and sailed through, whilst conversations and moments carry on in real time. 

Bennyworth’s first foray into the musical genre is commendable. The ending polyphony in particular serves to show the beauty of the three-hander, with Perry, Gill and Palka offering emotive harmonies for a fitting final flourish. Yet, the lyrics themselves demand a more thoughtful reconsideration. Some lyrics felt clumsy (“we focus on it superfluously”), whilst others leant too heavily on overused metaphors that cheapened the emotive meanings behind them (“like a kite flying high on the evening breeze”).

This thought should be extended to the story more broadly – in part, it felt unfinished. Whilst the eulogy is finally delivered, and conversations are had, the denouement feels surface level, and largely a pretence. Strings of plot that were pulled out over the course of the show were left unaddressed. Isla’s critique of Euan’s mother triggers a collapse in their relationship: but only for five minutes. By the next scene the issue remains unresolved and yet the characters have moved on – Isla’s comments feel pointless, offering no real material change to the way Euan views his mother. What could have been a tale of coming to terms with the reality of inconsistent parenting and its legacy, ended up uncertain where it stood.Similarly, the mother’s character remains underdone. So intense is Euan’s mythologising of her, and so little time is devoted to her character, that she feels more like a plot device than a character in her own right. 

By far the most fleshed out character, Isla, does not receive a fitting ending either. Working at an internship during the day, she is uncertain where her life will lead, and the role Euan will play in it. At times unlikeable, her character feels most realistic out of the three. Euan’s grief places her in the position of carer, and though she loves him and wants to support him, she fears the relationship will swallow up her life, leaving her with nothing that is her own. The conflicted feelings are captured beautifully by Gill. Still, the play sets a perfect grounding for a study into how to handle the grief of a loved one, and how it interacts with relationship dynamics, and yet offers only a surface level commentary on both its difficulties and its solutions. 

Through the course of an evening the relationship ebbs and flows from places of safety to places of real distress and uncertainty. The extent of the disharmony between them at times makes the ending unbelievable. Though they both sing of a new certainty and hope, little has been done to address their resounding fears. In the final few moments, the ending felt like one of forced hope, where really there were deep wounds temporarily glued together.