Ship Rock

Why James Sugg returned to The Sea.

by Dominic Mercier

Jacques-Jean Tiziou anchor man: Captain Owen Chase (James Sugg) spins his yarn. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

During 2006's Live Arts Festival, James Sugg — the multiple Barrymore Award winner and Pig Iron Theatre Company's Swiss Army Knife of a member — found out it isn't always so lonely on the high seas. Armed with his trusty squeezebox, Sugg took to the Wilma Theater's stage for his rock opera The Sea, and somehow persuaded entire audiences to join him in lusty choruses of "Bring that hooker home!" Telling the tale of briny Captain Owen Chase's doomed search for his drowned — or mermaid? — daughter, The Sea navigates musical styles from hushed lullabies to rollicking, full-volume shanties, all accompanied by projected images. With director/designer Lars Jan, Sugg is reprising the work beginning this weekend. The two tinkered with the narrative, added new songs and moved The Sea to Queen Village's Old Swedes' Church, and might show you just how foul sailor's mouths really were.

City Paper: Why revisit The Sea?

James Sugg: Simply put, the piece was not finished. It was put together very quickly in the summer of 2006 and placed onto the stage even quicker. We wanted time to refine the storytelling, the musical arrangements and the design. Thanks to the Philadelphia Theater Initiative for the means to do that.

CP: You've done lots of sound design and music for plays. What was it like to step into something that didn't conform to someone else's narrative ideas?

JS: I sat in the dark a lot. Lars Jan then sailed up in a little dinghy and warped me in the right direction.

CP: Olde Swedes' Church is quite different from the Wilma. How will the location affect the show?

JS: This is huge! When I was originally negotiating about a performance space with the Live Arts Festival in 2006, I was looking for something of a music venue that is intimate, around 150 seats. We weren't able to find what I thought was the right space, but settled on the Wilma, an amazing theater, but large and clean. As it turned out, the video was able to do so much in that space, we had a depth that made for a great theatrical reveal, and the sound was clear there. The show was able to conform and embrace the elements of the Wilma.

Old Swedes', however, has had the soul of this show stewing in its sanctuary for more than 300 years. The sanctuary houses a memorial to 34 sailors lost at sea. This will be a bit of the "unplugged" version, with the audience entering through the graveyard by candlelight, songs being trumpeted from the church's pipe organ, and the funereal themes of the piece finding resonance in their proper home.

CP: What can we expect musically?

JS: The sound this time will be more acoustic, orchestral. We're planning on giving you acoustic songs that can caress you or blow as much sound as you would expect from a rock show. Churches are good for that. Stylistically we still straddle a bit of the old world and a bit of the new.

CP: The multimedia aspect of the piece adds a certain old-meets-new quality.

JS: Old meets new is in seafaring, like everything else, but the video was meant as another way to explode the audience's imagination, to feel the violence and the beauty of the water itself. The images created by Lars Jan ended up being mostly textural, like the music, telling the story in a visceral way.

CP: A lot of your roles are best-known for the laughs they elicit and your characters' frenetic energy — Charles Guiteau in Assassins, Jon the Ballboy in Hell Meets Henry Halfway — but Captain Owen Chase is markedly different in the seriousness of his pursuit. What drew you to his story?

JS: I, like the captain, and, I would guess, like many of us, had this curiosity about the sea and the great unknown. That's what drew me to it. What does it feel like to see no land for weeks on end, to take on the rhythms of the waves, to be at the mercy of the sea and God himself? And then what is it to make that your whole life, your livelihood, and to pour your soul into that lonely, cold well?

(d_mercier@citypaper.net)

James Sugg's The Sea, Fri.-Sat., Jan. 11-12, and Jan. 17-19, 8 p.m., $15, Old Swedes' Church, 916 S. Swanson St., 215-656-3539, jamessugg.com, old-swedes.org.