Dogstar: ice-bound in existentialism

MARY CONWAY detects an innocent heart at the centre of Daisy Hall’s study of three whaling seamen, in a fatal situation

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THERE is significant excitement surrounding the arrival of Daisy Hall’s new play Dogstar at Hampstead Theatre Downstairs. Her earlier work, Bellringers, transferred from Edinburgh to Hampstead in 2024 having been shortlisted for the 2023 Women’s Prize for Playwriting. And there are those who regard Hall as echoing the style of leading dramatist Annie Baker, if not Samuel Beckett.

Both Bellringers and Dogstar are distinctive for their unusual and alternative settings: the former in a church belfry, the latter on a mid-19th-century whaling ship. In both plays, the outside world has created a formidable crisis which the characters must negotiate. 

Both offer us tiny microcosms from which to observe the minutiae of human behaviour. Both swerve from wry realism to moments of transcendental strangeness. And both provide unexpectedly quirky dialogue that jolts us from our comfort zones and defies expectation.

Dogstar is the name of the whaling ship which is stuck in an iceberg somewhere too far North for comfort. Whales are scarce. The crew have been dying of scurvy — one is still dying noisily offstage. The captain is cowering in his personal cabin and taking solace, we presume, in rum — we never actually see him. 

Just three disparate characters remain: all men, vivid creations who align with one another only through their shared situation. They are whalers all, but as different from one another as possible: in age, in origin, in family circumstance, in character, in sense of humour, and in thoughts about the living and the dead.

As they teeter between life and death, hope and fatalism, dream and reality, the whole experience becomes, itself, a kind of existentialist interlude. And though there is laughter certainly, the dialogue meanders unnervingly at times and touches on so many different styles and themes it loses dramatic drive. There are too many influences, perhaps, and too little sense of danger.

Only the fearsome creaking of the ice and the wafts of freezing mist testify to the plight these men are in, as death looms large and conversation drifts.

What we do enjoy, though, are the characters. Abdul Jalloh makes a splendid, deeply endearing 17-year-old Sam; the inwardly philosophical, outwardly borderline-unhinged Gorey is coolly and steadily enacted by a skilful Adam Rojko Vega; and Justin Edwards beautifully captures the ageing Babben who, long physically crippled by the job, remains positive to the last. There are sudden surprises and shifts in tempo and, yes, comedy — though not as many actual belly laughs as you might expect.

Also, the characters are strangely tender, belying the impossibly perilous nature of their work. And yet it is this innocent heart that defines the play.

Daisy Hall and director Lucy Morrison together create a fascinating study, and here and there is a real attempt at originality. The play is experimental — not the definitive revisiting of Moby Dick we might expect — and the excellent cast carry the show.  

Hampstead Theatre Downstairs must be applauded for continuing their hugely important commitment to emerging playwrights. And Dogstar confidently epitomises the importance of this work.

Runs until December 5. Box office: 020 7722 9301, hampsteadtheatre.com 

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