"Hearts of Steel"
Operation Crucible was the German code name for the Sheffield
Blitz, which devastated much of Sheffield, England, on December 12, 1940.
Among the worst casualties inflicted on this South Yorkshire industrial city was
the Marples Hotel, on the corner of Fitzalan Square and High Street. Hit by a
German high explosive bomb at 11:44 p.m., the seven-story building collapsed,
killing all but seven of its 77 occupants.
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| James Wallwork, Christopher McCurry, Kieran Knowles, Salvatore D'Aquila. Photo: Carol Rosegg. |
Operation Crucible,
a play by Kieran Knowles based on the event, premiered in 2015 at London’s
Finborough Theatre and is part of this year’s Brits Off-Broadway festival at
59E59 Theaters. It revisits the tragedy through the story of four men who, at
least as imagined here, found themselves trapped in the hotel’s basement, where
they had taken shelter as they returned home from the steel mill that employed
them.
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| Salvatore D'Aquila, James Wallwork, Christopher McCurry. Photo: Carol Rosegg. |
Judging from a well-illustrated account of the incident (and
a list of its survivors) that can be found here, Knowles’s
quartet of survivors appears to be fictional even though the details of their
suffering are true enough to what the actual survivors went through.
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| Salvatore D'Aquila, James Wallwork, Christopher McCurry, Kieran Knowles. Photo: Carol Rosegg. |
Then again, Operation
Crucible, despite its true-life inspiration, is anything but a docudrama.
Instead, it’s more of what might be called a choreopoetic response to the
bombing during which the hotel itself doesn’t appear until more than halfway
through.
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| Front Kieran Knowles, James Wallwork; rear: Salvatore D'Aquila, Christopher McCurry. Photo: Carol Rosegg. |
Just as important as its words is the inventively choreographic
direction of Bryony Shanahan, who gives it a high-intensity performance in
which each word, gesture, and activity is precisely calibrated. Aiding the
visual impression is a minimalist scenic background designed by Sophia
Simensky, constantly shifting shafts of light by Seth Rook Williams, and a
ripping sound score created by Dan Foxsmith, with effects that make it feel
like the theatre itself is about to fall.
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| Kieran Knowles, James Wallwork. Photo: Carol Rosegg. |
The play’s first half introduces the four men—Arthur (James
Wallwork), Bob (Salvatore D’Aquilla), Tommy (Kieran Knowles, the playwright),
and Phil (Paul Pinto)—at work in the steel mill. Their jobs may be difficult,
dangerous, and exhausting, but they find them purposeful, fulfilling, and
bonding. Still, with a war going on, we sense a bit of manly guilt because of
the protected status of steelworkers that makes them exempt from conscription.
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| Kieran Knowles. Photo: Carol Rosegg. |
As the men—speaking in bursts of rapid, driving language, some
of it in the first person, some in dialogue—mime the aggressively rhythmic
nature of their tasks, there’s an occasional abrupt time shift. Given the
fractured nature of the narrative, these aren’t always clear. Some appear to
hint at what the night holds in store, others to a time years later, when the
characters are recalling what happened in 1940.
We learn of the pride in what they do, the responsibilities
and rigors of their jobs, the accidents they’ve endured, the friendly hazing
handed young newcomers, their competition with women workers, and the teamwork they rely on. We also pick up bits
about their domestic lives, their dads, their kids, their romances,and their
football ardor, with references to blackout blinds, nightly planes overhead, food
shortages and queues, shelters, and so on.
Finally, we watch and listen to the men’s travails, seasoned
with sentimental memories, as they wait for over a dozen hours to be rescued
under the Marple’s rubble.
Operation Crucible
succeeds in creating a strong sense of localized male camaraderie, stoicism in
the face of danger, bravery, and anger under stress. As performed, however, it
tends to be more theatrical than dramatic. Long passages in the dark or
near-darkness, where we hear voices but don’t see their speakers, offer
opportunities to doze.
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| Kieran Knowles, Christopher McCurry, Salvatore D'Aquila, James Wallwork. Photo: Carol Rosegg. |
The characters—dressed uniformly by Simensky in white
shirts, gray slacks and vests, with scarf-like towels—are easier to
differentiate by their faces and sizes than by their personalities; apparent in
the writing, these tend to get buried in the performance, where everyone speaks
with the same thick Yorkshire accent at the same high volume.
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| Kieran Knowles, Salvatore D'Aquila, James Wallwork, Christopher McCurry. Photo: Carol Rosegg. |
Much as the excellent ensemble is to be applauded, its relentlessly
energetic vocal and physical realization of Shanahan’s demands gradually wears
thin. If Operation Crucible were any
longer than its intermissionless hour and 20 minutes I think I’d have begun feeling
almost as trapped in my seat as those four men do in their basement refuge.
OTHER VIEWPOINTS:
59E59 Theaters
59 E. 59th St., NYC
Through June 3
