Drawn from the journals and letters found on the frozen body of Captain Scott, the action of the play blends scenes of the explorer and his men at various stages of their ordeal, with flashbacks of Scott and his young wife and with fateful glimpses of his Norwegian rival, Roald Amundsen, whose party beat him to the South Pole. Refusing the use of sled dogs as unsporting, Scott and his team struggle to drag their heavy gear across a frozen wasteland, only to find that Amundsen has preceded them to their goal. The play is also a study of British pride and upper-class resolve—Scott's aristocratic sense of destiny and command and his young bride's ability to understand her husband's compulsive drive while failing to accept his motivations. But it is in the tragic trip back, as the members of the expedition die one by one, that the play reaches its dramatic apogee, capturing with chilling intensity the awesome bravery of men who must accept the bitter knowledge that suffering and death wi
Shout out to Mrs. Danvers for bringing this moving play to my awareness! Although I don't remember which book she reviewed mentioning this haunting play.
I'm acting in a staged reading of this in a month. I find it hard to separate my opinion of the play from thoughts about the part and the challenges of making this come across without sets and costumes and big props. Even moreso, it's hard to separate the quality of the play from the true story, which is epic and amazing and stupid all at once. Robert Falcon Scott's days-too-late quest for the South Pole has to be one of the prime all-time examples of courage and bravery pursued to the point of waste and destruction.
Tally's play is effective, perhaps a bit confusing with all of its time jumps, hallucinations, and daydreams, but in that sense, it's a good fit for the Antarctic landscape it tries to recreate on stage. Scott is a full-fleshed character, Amundsen makes for a puckish, sometimes cruel, sometimes funny conscience and foil. The rest are types, but that doesn't make them uninteresting. Evans is a fool in search of glory, a scapegoat, but really a good representation of the whole expedition. The others each show the face of the disaster from a different perspective--Bowers is the joker, Oates the stoic soldier, and Wilson the rational humanist. I'm excited to see what we come up with!
I saw the play years ago and immediately purchased the written play knowing that I would want to read it some day. I finally did. It is a tragic story but poetically crafted. An heroic figure stays true to himself, but his sense of honor ultimately leads to his death and the death of his men. He simply didn't know how to be any different.
IMHO (I don't usually use messaging tags. I'm not sure what has befallen me)... Terra Nova is an unfortunate title -- sounds sci-fi to me.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
I was reminded of this play by the Titus Oates bits in The White Darkness, a very different tale of the Antarctic that is also more than a bit surreal, and had to revisit it. It is as good as I remembered it, hard and faceted and cutting and perfect.
A wonderful play dramatizing the fatal polar expedition led by Robert Falcon Scott. As the narratives moves backwards and forwards in time, a classical feel develops as the figure of Roald Amundsen functions similarly to a Greek chorus, appearing to interrogate Scott as the tragic figure. This is a script that makes for a gripping evening of theatre.
I have a part in a community theater production of this play at Reno Little Theater. It is an emotive, historical drama about the first British expedition to the South Pole.