Boiler Room Six: A Titanic Story ★★★

One hundred and twelve years after its sinking, the RMS Titanic still holds such an enduring fascination for the public and artists alike. So much that there’s nearly always a “Titanic show” at every Edinburgh Fringe. The trouble is the story is so familiar, it’s hard to find anything new to say. So it’s to the credit that Boiler Room Six offers a different and rarely-explored perspective of the Titanic story.

Set in the belly of the ship, it tells the story of Frederick William Barrett, head stoker in the foremost boiler room, connected to Titanic’s first funnel. The extreme and dangerous conditions, the cramped quarters, the essential camaraderie of the stokers and trimmers who keep the ship moving are all explored in this one-man show.

Where this show succeeds where many other shows fail is the point of impact comes unexpected as it would have been on G-Deck. The action that takes place following this catastrophic incident shines a much-needed spotlight on the unsung heroes who toiled to keep the vessel afloat as long as possible in an attempt to get as many onboard to safety.

Tom Foreman‘s script has moments of great beauty – but it feels uneven. Its power comes when it leans towards the darkly poetic, whether that is the waltz of stoking the boilers, the poignancy of Barrett seeing the upper decks for the first time or the portholes with pleading eyes as the life boat descends.

Where it is less successful are the info dumps about the ship masquerading as speech. Too often dialogue resembles something written rather than spoken. The stoker’s personal back story is introduced awkwardly and never has enough breathing space to land emotionally.

Playing Barrett and a whole host of characters from the boiler room and around the ship, Max Beken is energetic, committed and sincere. But switching between poetic narrative and vernacular dialogue isn’t always as clean as it could be. Speaking at a consistently fast pace leaves nowhere to go when the accident occurs to allow him to escalate the sense of panic. And while Natalia Izquierdo‘s pervasive soundscape is evocative, Beken’s words are sunk regularly under the volume when an audience needs to maintain connection with the character.

Clearly a passion project of the writer, the show is a very watchable, well-meaning effort to champion those often neglected within the telling of the Titanic story. Despite valiant efforts, like the ill-fated ship, Boiler Room Six doesn’t reach its intended destination.