My passion for theatre is still growing every day, and that’s why I’m going back to it with my little playlists illustrating some characters from plays I like. It’s Alex‘s turn, the (only) character from Sea Wall written by Simon Stephens, to be put into music.
This play, written in 2008, is a monologue. One actor on stage plays Alex, a young photographer who tells us, his eyes piercing ours, his story. Funny, touching and tragic, Sea Wall is a theatre treasury that I had the luck to enjoy several times, and each one had been an enormous emotional slap.
Alex starts by talking of his daughter and quickly we understand that she means everything to him. He speaks as well of his wife, confessing to us he feels lucky to have her, and of his father-in-law who owns a house in Carqueiranne in the South of France.
Each summer, they get there, on holidays from London, to see the particular man that is Alex’s in-law. Together they speak about metaphysic, mathematic, religion, tennis and go scuba diving, exploring the seabed and the seawall you can discover there…
Small elements that seem disconnected and irrelevant? Not at all. Each line is thought of and drives to this dramatic moment. Once attached to Alex and his family, the author decides to crush our hearts.
While being into the water looking back to the beach, Alex sees his father-in-law reading, without looking to his daughter, playing at the edge of the cliff. Her mother is not here. And from afar Alex sees without hearing, his daughter falling and breaking her neck. Everything changes. And the music too.
This play explores love, culpability, mourning and a lot of other feelings and human reactions. It’s this brutal break that I’ve weirdly enjoyed and that I’ve tried to recreate in this playlist between family love and absolute sadness.
The playlist 👇
And if you want to go further than the music, the play reference:
- Sea Wall – Simon Stephens – 2008 – Bloomsbury Modern Plays
