A ripping production with plenty of laughs: Guys and Dolls, at the Bridge Theatre, reviewed

Further than the Furthest Thing is an allegorical play set on a remote island populated by English-speakers from all over the world. Dialect experts will have a ball unscrambling the set-up. First we meet Auntie Mill, a white Scotswoman whose husband, Uncle Bill, is a black fisherman with a West Country accent. Their nephew, Francis, is a mixed-race teenager whose verbal mannerisms seem to originate from North Yorkshire. And he has a pregnant girlfriend, Rebecca, who looks east Asian but talks like a Dubliner. This crazy muddle may be a deliberate assault on the entire cult of colour-blind casting. Or it could be a thoughtless embrace of chaos. Either way, it’s baffling to watch. Theatre is all about resemblances and the closer the resemblance, the more successful the play. That’s why actors wear costumes and wigs. If imitation dies, so does artistic truth.

The show’s storyline is equally inscrutable. The opening scenes introduce us to a community of simple-hearted crofters who scrape a meagre living from poultry and haddock. When Francis returns home from South Africa, he brings with him a charismatic millionaire, Mr Hansen, who wants to build a crayfish plant on the island. Uncle Bill, who acts as chief planning officer, opposes Mr Hansen’s scheme but the rules change at the last minute and Francis is given the casting vote. He sides with Uncle Bill and betrays Mr Hansen. And yet Mr Hansen doesn’t punish Francis for his treachery but continues to employ him.

In this parallel world nothing makes sense, and in order to stay involved in the narrative you have to abandon your attachment to logic – just as you might when listening to an anecdote recounted by a five-year old. The writer, Zinnie Harris, sets out to create a story with the strangeness, sweep and grandeur of a child’s fairy tale and she succeeds.