THEATRE: Making a Splash

There is a close kinship between theatre and sport: both are public spectacles that depend on attracting paying customers and appealing to our emotions. A football, cricket, or rugby match can provide as much drama as the greatest Shakespearean tragedy; just look at the excitement garnered by the recent Ashes series. So it's quite surprising that sport isn't better represented in the arts.

Amphibians - a new play at the Bridewell Theatre, just off Fleet Street - aims to combine these two worlds, and it fulfils its brief admirably. It's a tale that explores the physical and mental struggles in the life of elite swimmers, following the athletes through competition, training and life during and after the Olympics, and examining the emotional toll the sport takes on them. The play begins with the two main characters, Elsa and Max, around 30 and both former Olympians. In flashbacks, we are shown the pressure they were under as teenagers, and the effect it had on their relationship.

In present day scenes, we see how they have dealt with their past glory and whether they have been able to move on once their careers are over. The life of a swimmer could easily be told in a factual television documentary, but by putting the subject on the stage, it allows an audience to understand what is involved in elite sport in a unique way. The typical day-to-day life of an athlete is mundane. It involves a rigid timetable: waking a certain time, training for a set time period, and endless lists of numbers: lengths, times, margins. Not the most exciting of viewing. But Amphibians makes this into a story, a tale with almost a mystic quality that would also appeal to people with no real interest in swimming at all. It is a play about human relationships, the pressure to succeed, and how decisions we make in life can make a fundamental difference to our future paths. It just happens to be set around a swimming pool.

Amphibians is based entirely on actual interviews conducted by the director Cressida Brown with a number of Olympic swimmers. Not only did she ask them about the mechanics of being an athlete, but also about their relationship with the water, how it made them feel physically and mentally. Cressida then approached writer Steve Waters and asked him to make a narrative out of her research. I spoke to Steve after seeing the play and he admitted to me that he knew little about sport before talking to Cressida. He had been amazed and excited, however, by the fine details of the life of a professional athlete, and he felt that his naivety on the subject had helped him with his writing, as he was able to add a mythical quality to the play that makes it appeal to a wider audience.

But what do real swimmers think of it? Mark Foster is one of the most successful British swimmers of all time, and was one of the athletes interviewed for the play. He told me he could relate to huge parts of it. Most important to him, however, was that the play really shows the sacrifices people such as him have to make if they are to be successful. The public generally just sees the end performance - that world championship or Olympic final - but that is just a fraction of a swimmer's life. There is so much more going on behind the scenes, and Amphibians captures it well.

The performance is a highly visual experience and there could be no more fitting venue for it: the Bridewell is a former Victorian swimming pool. As the recent production of the Railway Children at Waterloo showed, immersing the audience in a site-specific space adds an extra dimension to the theatrical experience. Built in 1893, the pool served the students of the nearby Printing School and the local community for decades until its closure in the 1960s. It lay derelict and unused until it was re-opened as a theatre in 1994. For Amphibians the audience is seated from the shallow end of the pool up to the surrounding balcony. There is no water, and no smell of chlorine, but the space is brought to life once again through the creative use of underwater footage projected onto the stage and imaginative choreography that replicates the process of swimming.

With the 2012 Olympics almost upon us, Amphibians is a great example of showing how sport is not just about an end result. Georgina Lee is another former British Olympic swimmer who has been involved in the play from the start. She is now part of the London Olympics organising committee and she hopes that plays such as Amphibians show how sport and the Olympics can inspire other things - not necessarily the next big sporting star, but a new playwright, artist or author.

Amphibians runs from 4th-28th January at the Bridewell Theatre, Bride Lane off Fleet Street, London EC4Y 8EQ
www.offstage.org.uk

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