Monthly Bulletin May/June 2005 - Vol 8 No. 3

The Lightkeeper

by Kristie Eggleston, LoA Webmaster

The Lightkeeper, Verity Laughton’s wonderfully woven and stirring story of the sea, stars the “masterly” Ian Scott. This AWGIE-Award winning play is a gripping and moving drama about love, loss and life on the edge. The play, most recently shown in Sydney, is on the move to the Northern Territory and Tasmania.

Evoking the spirit of the ‘shipwreck coast’, The Lightkeeper ingeniously weaves tales from South Australia’s own sea-faring past to create a powerfully absorbing tale of great tragedies and greater triumphs. Trawling through the real-life tales of lightkeepers, sailors, lighthouses and shipwrecks, Laughton discovered the voice of ancient mariner Jack Power on a solitary early morning walk, close to Cape Northumberland lighthouse. 

Ian Scott is riveting as Power, the former seaman turned lighthouse keeper, who enthrals audiences with terrifying tales of life at sea and of meeting his great true love, the widow Mary Agnes. But like the ships wrecked by high seas, Jack must soon weather his own storm. His darkest secret intimately revealed during one night, keeping the light.

Ian Scott, The Lightkeeper Photograph: South East Arts Region

Scott not only fascinates us, like the ancient mariner he is, with terrifying evocations of the ferocity of the sea, but develops power into a complex individual. His courage is demonstrated not just in his battles to save lives, but in the way he faces the tragedy of losing those he most loves. Scott's performance is masterly. He draws us into the intimacy of the room in which he keeps watch, creating this man, ordinary on the surface, yet gradually assuming the characteristics of a hero.

Like the beautiful vessels he has seen wrecked by natural forces, his own life is shipwrecked by events that seem just as random. 

The wondering tenderness of his love for Agnes Mary Taylor, the widow he marries and takes to the lighthouse with her small son Henry, is prophetically framed by the sounds of a storm rising outside. Even more moving is the account of his unexpectedly coming to love the child, to whom he tells some of his sea yarns. Two classic, romantic tropes are at work in this play - that of true love that ends in tragedy, and of the sea and the life on its edges and in ships. 

Scott's marvellously nuanced and physically convincing performance creates an original and unforgettable character as well. 

edited from review by Helen Thomson, The Age - Thursday, 30 January 2003

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