Theatre review: On the Waterfront

Published on Monday 4 August 2008 09:16

ON THE WATERFRONT *** PLEASANCE COURTYARD (VENUE 33)

ELIA Kazan's classic film study of corruption and moral pugilism on the New York docks, featuring an unforgettable star turn from Marlon Brando as Terry, was always going to be a tough act to follow. Yet writer Budd Schulberg chose to adapt his own screenplay for the stage while the film was still in production and, as a play, On The Waterfront enjoyed some off-Broadway success. More than 50 years on, Steven Berkoff got his mitts on the UK rights.

He directs this Nottingham Playhouse production as a quasi-balletic dust-up using minimal props and shadowy lighting design on a bare stage – a silhouette of the Statue of Liberty wielding a docker's hook frowns over the action.

That action centres on disgraced former boxer and pigeon fancier Terry Malloy, a self-confessed bum caught up insidiously in his older brother's racket. The mob controls the docks and has a decisive way of handling its critics. When Malloy is unwittingly dragged into one such hit, he falls into orbit with the dead man's sister, Edie, and the upstanding streetwise priest Father Barry, who tries to mobilise the dockers to rise up.

With big shoes to fill, Simon Merrells makes believable work of capturing Terry's beguiling mix of inarticulacy, sensitivity, bluster and bravado, although his naturalism jars with Coral Beed's rather shrill Edie.

Merrells and Robin Kingsland, as his brother Charley "The Gents" Malloy, are a tighter double act in the famous "I coulda been a contender" scene, which brims with anguish, frustration and latent compassion.

But this production stands and sometimes falls on the choreography of the ensemble players, who move as an undulating mass whether portraying the sneering, gnarly mobsters or the desperate dockers jostling for work. The slow-motion device is over-used, old hat and without tension in key climactic scenes but those roosting pigeons were a joy to behold.

• Until 25 August. Today 2pm