Ships
★★☆☆☆ Lacking Nuance
Leith Arches (Venue 324): Tue 11 – Sat 15 Aug 2026
Review by Flora Henderson
Staged in the bar of the Leith Arches events space off Leith Walk, Ships by Mark Forrest for Chapter Three Productions, is set in a very similar Leith bar in the late 1980s.
The immersive nature of the production is established from the get-go, with the space being lit by fairy lights, minimising the divide between the audience and cast members. This inclusivity is continued once the production begins, as the actors break the fourth wall and directly address the audience.
Sunny Sanghera, Gwen M Dolan and Robert Hackney. Pic: Mark Forres.
Gwen M Dolan enters the enters into the audience space first, selecting unsuspecting men to act as her character, Alex’s previous boyfriends. This could be an effective theatrical device, might the absence of physical specificity and intention in its execution leaves it having little impact.
Throughout the opening scene, nominally taking place between Alex and her arrogant boss, Jack (Robert Hackney), there is such an overwhelming amount of monologue from Alex that one wonders why Jack is on stage at all.
The shifts between the two characters interacting with each other and Alex interacting with the audience are unclear, as Dolan lacks grounding and doesn’t embody the changes with precision. This could be an oversight on the part of the director (Liam Rudden), as clear physical instruction and blocking would have certainly been helpful here.
undermined
The next character to enter the space is Connor (Sunny Sanghera), a sailor returning to his hometown after a long stint away. In the moments when the two characters are simply interacting with each other there is a real connection between Sanghera and Dolan, but this is frequently undermined by interludes of unsubtle exposition. Rather than endearing the audience to the characters, these outbursts of crude trauma-dumping do nothing to enlist an empathetic response.
]Gwen M Dolan and Joe Gilday. Pic: Mark Forres.
Joe Gilday is impressively sleazy as Alex’s husband, Rob, an ex-convict recently released from Saughton prison, and he displays a very watchable emotional intensity and menacing physicality. However, the script gives him little to work with as his character is clearly designed to bring nothing but shock value, and he does not have the opportunity to explore the multi-faceted human beneath the surface of gratuitous violence and bigotry.
This is a problem that is consistent throughout Mark Forrest’s writing. He clearly has valid points to make about addiction, racial prejudice, and class injustice, but is unable to illuminate them effectively. He fails to accomplish one of the basic fundamentals of storytelling, the idea that one should show and not tell, and his political points are clunkily interspersed throughout the piece.
unclear
His characters are caricatures with little variety or depth, but who suddenly demonstrate outbursts of heightened emotion that come from nowhere, and it is therefore impossible for the actors to deliver these from a place of truth. The theatrical style is unclear, with an odd mixture of flowery metaphors and ‘gritty’ dialogue. Furthermore, the plot is revealed too quickly rather than being slowly eked out in a way that keeps the audience engaged.
Overall, the piece’s intention is admirable, and the themes it covers are certainly important, but it is completely devoid of the reality and nuance required to engross an audience in a story. The performers, as a whole, do their best with the material they have been given, but, as it stands, the play provides little insight into realistic human relationships or emotion.
Running time: One hour (no interval).
Leith Arches (Ground level), 6 Manderston Street, Leith EH6 8LY (Venue 324).
DATES August 2026.
Tue 11: 7.30, Wed 12/Thu 13: 6pm; Fri 14/Sat 15: 2.30pm.
Tickets and details: Book here at EdFringe.com.
Gwen M Dolan and Sunny Sanghera. Pic: Mark Forres.
ENDS
