There’s scurvy, mutiny and mystery in Dogstar – but like its icebound ship this drama goes nowhere

Hampstead theatre, LondonA bickering trio of trapped survivors who have lost their comrades are kept in an ominous stasis in Daisy Bell’s play

The setup is strong in Daisy Hall’s follow-up to her debut, Bellringers. A few survivors on a whaling ship trapped in arctic ice are figuring out how to break free as the ice groans and explodes ominously around them.

Babben (Justin Edwards) is an old hand who has whaled for almost 40 years; Gorey (Adam Rojko Vega) is a mischief-maker who walks around with a gun; the youngest, and most strait-laced, is Sam (Abdul Jalloh) who seems immobilised by anxiety.

The men have lost dear comrades on the Dogstar and hold each other responsible, in different ways, including talk of “bad luck” because Sam has killed a baby whale. There is also the Damoclean sword of scurvy, to which many shipmates have succumbed and these men fear, with all its hallucinatory effects.

The problem is that, like the ship itself, the play goes nowhere. Under the direction of Lucy Morrison, the men bicker and witter, sometimes humorously, although you wish it were darker, sharper, funnier. The trio’s conversation makes goldfish-like circles of repetition. Their forced stasis – they can’t go anywhere, so they simply wait – lends a kind of Beckettian absurdism to the humour and squabbling. Is this Waiting for Godot on ice? There is talk of life and death but not enough of an existential exploration for that.

The script wobbles between ghost story and mutiny drama, neither chilling enough for the former nor exploring power keenly enough for the latter. The ship’s captain, ailing and always offstage, is blamed for pushing the ship too far up north and for overwhaling. An oil barrel that sits on stage is mentioned accusingly, and along with the repeated talk of overwhaling, it becomes a too-blatant metaphor for today’s depletion of planetary resources and exploitation of nature.

A key part of the plot is a recurring vision of the shipowner, Michael Carmichael (his name doubles up as a joke). Is it caused by the onset of scurvy? Sam mysteriously ends up with Carmichael’s watch and dressing-gown, which he dons. Is he becoming him? Who knows. A plot-turn at the end is too enigmatic, the production not powered enough for the turbulence, ocean-bound or otherwise, that it seeks to explore.