The Ships Pass Quietly

‘The Ships Pass Quietly’ by WA playwright John Aitken, has been revived by the Prickly Pear Ensemble and is showing at the Subiaco Arts Centre Studio each evening at 8.00 until 11^th July. NO LATE COMERS. This latest 80-minute production opened in Subiaco on the 120^th anniversary of the birth of the Odessa poet Anna Akhmatova.

             It is just after World War 2 and, in her rundown Leningrad flat, the 60 years old Anna Andreyevna (Vivienne Glance) is reminiscing over a cup of tea, with her friend Lydia (Alinta Carroll). Following the Central Asian evacuation, and being considered Bourgeois and ‘half harlot, half nun’, Anna was expelled from the Writers’ Union, and her poems were banned from publication. Poverty stricken, Anna was forced to earn a meagre living by translating and publishing the works of her childhood hero Pushkin. As her father did not want to see any verses printed under his ‘respectable’ name, she adopted her grandmother’s surname, Akhmatova.

            Her poetry was samizdat, this is when an individual writes dissident works by hand, then passes them to a person capable of memorising the stories, or poetry, before burning the original. In Anna’s case, Lydia had a great talent, not only for memorising, but being able to relate the works with all the feeling required.

           Anna’s writings were considered evocative, like that of English writers, Robert Browning and Thomas Hardy.

           There is then a scene where Anna recalls how she fell in love with the famous, but flighty, poet Nikolay Gumilyov (Ethan Tomas). He was very jealous of the fact that his excellent, but dreamlike works were still never recognised as having Anna’s quality of creating a vivid picture.

          Thinking that such a famous writer would be rich, Yuri (Brian Liau), a Mongolian half-breed student who is on the run, breaks into her flat. After his ‘visit’ Anna remembers some of her many love affairs, which soon followed the execution of her husband for anti-Soviet activities.

         When some of her patriotic poems found their way to the front pages of Pravda, Stalin had her son, Lev, arrested and placed in a gulag. Not surprisingly, when she returned home one day, she found a Party official (Ethan Tomas) going through her belongings, looking for her rebellious writings. He made her an offer she could not refuse – or could she?

As a post script:           Akhmatova was allowed to travel to England, in order to receive an honorary doctoral degree from Oxford University. Anna rejected marriage proposals from Boris Pasternak, but one can only wonder if Pasternak partially based the character of Zhivago, around the story of his beloved Anna.

I saw this play at the Blue Room a few years ago, and remember being most impressed by the lyrical style of writing; once again, I found the poetic and warm script most appropriate for the subject. With Anna, being played by Vivienne, herself an award-winning poet, and Alinta, who has tremendous musical skills, the mood, emotion, pace and delivery was riveting.

With a beautifully chosen selection of music by Shostakovich, given the authentic touch by sound designer David Le May, and the very well considered lighting design (Jo Marsh) director John Aitken has again conquered the mood of the story. This is a play for those who enjoy well-written poetical scripts, presented by a talented cast.