Review: Quicksand @ The Dukes Theatre, Lancaster (From Lancaster And Morecambe Citizen)

Review: Quicksand @ The Dukes Theatre, Lancaster

6:17pm Wednesday 2nd February 2011 in Leisure By Helen Perkins, Reporter

POLISH soup and family drama were served together in a play that offered its audience a fresh view of Morecambe Bay.

Furness writer Zosia Wand provided a taste of the complex lives of European migrants who arrived in Cumbria in the 1980s.

Her fictional drama, which revolves around a genial love story between two twenty-somethings, is complicated by family secrets and their past lives abroad.

It was this particular focus on the plight of migrants in Morecambe that gave the play's charismatic cast of four their opportunity to impress the audience - and they did.

Performed Polish accents were conspicuously different from the Shakespearean tones or British monologues, which are more commonly under the spotlight.

The voices and roles Quicksand brought to the stage were believable and, in putting Polish culture on a platform, the play offered something uncoventional and engaging.

Traditional songs, Polish specialities, dancing and phrases from Europe were all featured and while I was sitting in the round of the Dukes Theatre I was sucked right in – just as the play’s title had promised.

* Until February 12 at the Dukes then Theatre By The Lake in Keswick from February 16 to 26.