Set over the weekend of a local Birdman Festival that transforms a rundown seaside town once a year, Caterpillar is an intimate three hander set largely in the sitting room of a Bed and Breakfast. Playwright Alison Carr lends her local North East knowledge of exactly how the influx of tourists and energy change a remote coastal town giving it life for two days a year. In her interview with the company, she also describes her fascination with taking a leap off a pier, of that pause mid-flight, whether you fly or fall: “a moment of suspension just after stepping off the pier” she says, “Elongating what would, in reality, be a split second.”
These moments which bookend the play are really interesting, filled with rich almost poetic language: evocative and full of imagery. Claire is the character taking this leap, played by Angelina Sangster, and these monologues are delivered beautifully with poignancy and truth. There could happily have been more moments like these in the play, seeing behind the facade of the characters when they interact with each other, as they spend so much time concealing things from each other and at best hiding things, at worst lying about them. It wrongfoots us watching, rather than giving us depth, which is unfortunate.
The set is stunning. It absolutely looks like a sitting room with a kitchen behind where we can see all the kitchen paraphernalia including kettle and cups. They make real coffee on stage. And thankfully where there is food and drink they are really eating and drinking: there’s nothing worse than mimed food and drink in a realistic set. The entrance hall with the front door offstage also adds to the idea that their world exists outside. Set Designer Sabrina Giles and Set Team Leader Simon Glazier have done an enviable job, including the floor, with uneven scalloped edges as if it’s a shoreline meeting the sea.
The play has a lot of scene changes with some really short scenes and so much of the transitions could be done in the modern way by the actors in character taking things on and off with them, rather than almost blackout, where stage crew came on with large or small items to add or remove. It does however, give us a chance to hear some lovely scene change music including Morcheeba and a tiny piece of Pink Floyd’s ‘Wish You Were Here’ which is very welcome.
Claire is holding secrets which we never really get to the bottom of. It’s her only son’s fourth birthday, she has a loving husband, yet is not a natural mother. From a writing point of view, and a literature analysis point of view and even a character actor point of view, writing / analysing / playing these unlikeable characters is interesting, and of course these people exist, and the playwright herself says her intrigue lies in why they behave the way they do. Claire is clearly hurting, but without ever exploring why, it’s hard for any audience to feel sympathy for her, when what she mostly does is lash out to those around her with nastiness and bitchiness which could be seen as dark humour and garnered some laughter, but for others, the reaction was an uncomfortable silence.
The character of Simon is the oddest in the play, with behaviour that isn’t just contradictory it’s incongruent. He immediately treats the place as if he’s lived there all his life, knowing where everything is, offering to pick up the mother: Maeve from the hospital – he is a paying guest at the B&B so why? Topped with his full on then full off behaviour to Claire, especially after she’s been nasty to him. We will forgive a character’s behaviour if it makes sense, but not if it doesn’t. It’s the difference between a character changing their mind about a reasonable thing and watching a character in a TV soap recite a Shakespeare sonnet with zero context in the middle of a scene.
This is a character driven play but when the characters are all pretty unlikeable it makes it difficult for an audience to care about what happens to them, and as nothing much has changed by the end, except for jumping off a pier, it makes it even more difficult. Perhaps some deeper character work would benefit the story, making the choices seem more contradictory and less completely conflicting. This is an odd play with some interesting ideas, but ultimately concerns three very damaged people over the course of a weekend.
New Venture Theatre, 19 June 2026
Caterpillar runs until 27 June 2026
Photos credit: Strat Mastoris
