Danny & the Deep Blue Sea at The SiLo

By GRAHAM REID

This production of John Patrick Shanley's Danny & the Deep Blue Sea could well turn out to be the best "little" play of the year, even though it's the first off the blocks.

With shatteringly powerful performances from Sara Wiseman and Scott Wills, intelligently restrained direction from Caroline Bell-Booth, a judiciously expressive set and well-thought-through cinematic lighting/sound techniques, Danny is a rare experience: perfectly formed, compelling theatre.

Audiences go to plays for a host of reasons, but high among them is the hope of seeing gifted actors perform at this extraordinary level, deeply nuanced and explosively raw. Wiseman and Wills give us three riveting acts in a seamless 90 minutes that passes in the blink of an eye.

In many ways, the play is an actor's vehicle and offers audiences no middle ground: it will be either wonderful or terrible, depending entirely on performance.

A highly charged text offers intimately interlocked but one-dimensional planes populated by shapely lines that scan well but require complete immersion and active insight in order to live.

Shanley (who wrote the celebrated screenplay for Moonstruck) is from the Bronx and it shows to good effect. Roberta (Wiseman) and Danny (Wills) start off as disturbingly likely characters damaged in likely ways and become engaged in an extraordinarily rarefied interaction that distils them to their seminal, almost child-like, elements.

Their introductory collision in a deserted Bronx bar seems almost predestined. The two lives snake out toward each other in a volatile mix of need, despair, guilt, fear and sexuality, and when they finally lock together in an exploration of tenderness, it could easily be the last thing either of them ever does.

A completely adult vision of Beauty and the Beast, this is still no mere parable of redemption and love. Until the last minute, anything could go in any direction, largely because both Wiseman and Wills immerse us in something exquisitely real, while Bell-Booth keeps the tells to a minimum.

Go to this play. Dive into Danny's and Roberta's deep blue sea. Mind the shoals.