Lost at sea

The tragedy of the sinking of a Hull trawler in 1974 is explored in a new play. Theatre correspondent Nick Ahad reports.

“I think most writers feel the same way. It’s not something you do because you kind of fancy it, you do it because you can’t not do it,” says Janet Plater.

She should know. Not only because she is returning to writing for the stage, finally scratching an itch she ignored for two decades, but she saw at the closest quarters someone who wrote because he simply couldn’t not do it. That person was her dad, known to the rest of the world as the great screen and stage writer Alan Plater, who died in 2010. The proud son of Hull remains much missed in many quarters, not least by his daughter.

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She returns to the stage at Hull Truck, where her play The Gaul opened last week. It is the second of artistic director Mark Babych’s Hull trilogy and the subject of grief and bereavement are not far from the surface of the play.

“Over the past few years I was dealing with bereavement myself. My mum died just before my dad and I found myself dealing with the loss of both of them from my life. It was through that that I started to think about how you deal with that and that led to this play. Anyone who has lost someone they loved will know it’s a difficult thing to navigate.

“I have to say some of that is there in the piece, but I would hate it to sound gloomy because that’s not right and it wouldn’t be a good piece of theatre and my dad would be furious if there weren’t some gags in it.”

She’ll have to work hard to find gags in the story of The Gaul, but the very darkest humour seems to emanate from writers who emanate from Hull. There will, it’s a safe bet to say, be jokes, perhaps not least because the story Plater is telling is so deeply tragic.

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The Gaul, as most Hullensians will know, was the name of the Hull trawler which was caught in a storm off the Norwegian coast in 1974. The 36-man crew all died and many of the relatives of the dead insisted it was a victim of Russian hostilities at the height of the Cold War. A public inquiry in 2004 concluded it sank because two chutes were left open and water rushed in as it was battered by rough seas.

It’s the story of that ship and its crew that Plater has decided to tackle. It’s a big story to attempt to tell.

“It’s epic in its ambition and intention but it’s not an epic night in the theatre, we’re not going to keep you there for four hours,” says Plater. “It actually feels to me like a huge responsibility. It’s a responsibility to the people of Hull.

“Having said that, what we’re doing is simply trying to explore the story truthfully. It’s not an enquiry or an investigation, I’m not purporting to have fresh information or anything like that.

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“I’m simply trying to explore the truth of what happened, to say something true about the events of that time.”

Although the 2004 inquiry hoped to put paid to conspiracy theories that it was more than the cruel sea involved in taking the lives of the crew of The Gaul, the stories around Hull abound. It is one of the city’s legends and, for many, it remains one of the city’s great unsolved mysteries.

“If you’re from Hull you know about the Gaul either because you remember it from living there as I did – it happened when I was at school,” says Plater.

“Or you’re just aware of it as a huge thing for the city. I remember people talking about it all of my life.

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“That’s the other reason why I wanted to write this play. I wanted to write something about where I’m from and I wanted to say to that community ‘you are not forgotten’. That sounds like a simple thing, but I think it still means something to people for someone to say that even though the inquiries are over, this is not something that will ever be forgotten, especially by those of us who are from this city.”

Plater is not a fan of the word ‘closure’. Her play is definitely not that – it doesn’t even attempt to be. She believes the whole notion is a myth.

“I was interested in exploring loss and how people deal with it. The fact that people use the word closure is a bit of a nonsense really,” she says.

“Yes, the idea of how you deal with losing somebody you love is in the script, of course it is. But The Gaul families had to deal with that loss and so much more as well. They dealt with the frustration and anger of not knowing what happened. In theatre it’s our responsibility to explore the feeling and emotion of an event like that, not just represent the events.”

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It’s like listening to Plater senior, who I had the huge privilege of interviewing on several occasions for the Yorkshire Post. Like his daughter who follows in his footsteps he believed in the power of theatre to actually change things. As one of theatre’s Angry Young Men, he made things possible on a stage that had been hitherto ‘not done’.

The journey of this play to the stage of Hull Truck has not been easy. “I’ve been writing this for a long time,” says Plater.

She began her career as a playwright impressively, the BBC producing one of her plays, but she eventually moved from London to Tyneside and worked as an actor’s agent in order to 
have ‘a family and a regular income’.

In 2011, however, the urge was too great to continue to ignore and she went back to her keyboard.

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“I wrote one scene for a scratch night in Hull, which was staged at Ensemble 52 and once I saw it on stage I thought that I really ought to pursue it.”

Five short years later, we will all get to see the fruits of her labour. I suspect it will be worth the wait.

***

The Gaul. The question for three decades was: was it the victim of a storm or a casualty of Cold War hostilities?
It remains, for many families, the only question about the vessel. No trawler tragedy, and Hull has seen many, caused so so much controversy.

Plater’s play looks at the lives of the families left behind and the real life story of a TV documentary crew who, in 1997, discovered the wreck of The Gaul.
The Gaul, Hull Truck Theatre, until October 29. 01482 323638. www.hulltruck.co.uk

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