Maiden Voyage

Taking the story of the first all-female crew to compete in Round the World Whitbread Race is a challenging choice for a small-scale musical. One that proves as up and down as the high seas it navigates.

Having 9 women thrown together and confined to a 58ft yacht for 154 days gives a lot of time to draw on and develop individual characters and personalities. These women should go through all the emotions and clashes that must have happened on the voyage. But this production misses this opportunity and instead skims across the relationships, favouring factual details. It never goes any deeper that ‘all pulling together’. Their voices harmonise well but the songs by Carmel Dean, are all similarly buoyant in nature and instantly forgotten. Even the addition of a trio of cartoon like reporters spouting chauvinistic names. A mother and King Hussain who add nothing to the heart of the story and only exist as a distraction.

Mindi Dickstein’s book and lyrics are too expositional and in a story that spans such a lengthy time frame becomes very repetitive in its ‘sailing against the odds’ theme.

Chelsea Halfpenny as Tracey the skipper and navigator who instigates the whole adventure does what she can to make here character rounded and multi-faceted. but is let down by the material. The rest of her crew give their all too, but with only different accents to delineate them they become more of a chorus, which is a real shame.

This is a show that drowns itself in the number of songs at the cost of telling a real heartfelt story. It could be raised from the depths to sail again, but not without a certain amount of trimming the sails. At 90 minutes without an interval, it unfortunately feels long which is down to its lack of heart. These talented women go on a journey, but they lose us half way.

Photo credit: Pamela Raith

Two stars.