A production lacking in surety which could do with more character definition

Chris Salt’s new play Fell, with Edgeways Productions, presents the story of a Cumbrian schoolboy, outsider and Elvis Costello fan Lyle, who finds himself teaming up with Jake, a loner, two years his senior, who spends his life in the rough wilderness of the Lake District. Throughout this 80-minute play, the two develop a bond which, while mutually beneficial, is starkly coloured with their personal traumas. This new relationship, and the harshness of the surrounding landscape, forces them to confront their own personal inner darkness finding their way towards a redemptive future.

Although this may sound at first a little heavy, the cast bounces nicely off each other and deftly finds the elements of humour within the play. Ned Cooper’s Lyle is engaging and sardonic but awkward, seeming almost not to know himself, while Tom Claxton’s Jake begins the production with a gruff exterior which peels away to a sensitive, if lost, young man. Lost is a good word. Both of these characters are from the beginning lost to their traumas – while Lyle literally is lost in the Lake District – attempting as best they can to find their way through a world which is harsh on the mountainside as well as in the town below.

Lost too, unfortunately, was a lot of meaning and understanding in this production. While there are a lot of enjoyable elements to it, a fair amount of character development was yet to be fully realised. The reasoning behind certain actions seemed not to make sense, certain choices throughout the production felt as if they came from the ether and were not character driven but existed solely to keep the play from ending. The direction, from Janys Chambers, emphasised male silence a little too earnestly which gave the feeling that the ball was continually being dropped. 

Designer Jane Linz Roberts’ set conjured up the brutal and the beautiful of this landscape and the succession of boxes and bric-a-brac lent into the scavenging nature of survival. It was stylistically satisfying and enjoyable to watch Jake and Lyle climbing using these boxes in lieu of the suggested mountain – that this was constructed as part of the action of the play allowed the audience to lean into the production and avoided the protracted transitions which peppered the rest of the piece. These transitions, which for reasons not entirely knowable were performed solely by Claxton, all received an accompanying Elvis Costello song which while good for a seated boogie (I am a fan), tended not to match the energy of the scenes surrounding it and therefore felt a little, or a lot, incongruous. 

Notwithstanding these weaker elements of the production, the strengths lie mainly in the acting – both Cooper and Claxton were enjoyable to watch and the relationship between the pair, especially in the early parts of the play, were very believable. I would love to see a future production of this piece streamlining its more drawn-out elements and with character choices and motivations more clearly defined, allowing more space for this story to shine.