Boiler Room Six: A Titanic Story

Review by Russell Cook from Suffolk Village Info.

The sheer terror and the extreme horror for passengers and crew during the loss of the Titanic is put into sharp focus as the hundreds on board the vessel face their terrible fate. And it all comes together in this dazzling and engrossing one-man historical drama telling the story of the ship’s boiler rooms, and the men who stayed below decks to keep it afloat for as long as possible.

Charlie Sheepshanks is brilliant and totally jaw dropping as Frederick Barrett in Tom Foreman’s widely acclaimed ‘Boiler Room Six: A Titanic story’ which took to the stage at the Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds, last night (Wednesday, June 3).

Drawing on historical records and survivor testimony, the piece explores labour, duty, and the working-class heroes often left out of the vessel’s demise.

Working in the boiler rooms of the ship’s maiden voyage, Barrett’s fight for survival details one of the most devastating accounts of the last few hours of Titanic. It gives a voice to the sacrifice of the working men below deck, who kept the ship afloat for as long as possible, saving hundreds of lives while knowingly giving up on their own.

We witness the comradeship between the men working in the bow - those whose time off duty centred around, food, drink and cards - and how they struggled in the white and green foam just after the vessel stuck the iceberg on its maiden voyage across the Atlantic to New York on April 15, 1912.

You see the intensity and strength-sapping work the men carry out in boiler room six which is the first compartment to get flooded.

Time is of the essence for the men down below and the heroism they display is remarkable.

There’s 17-year-old Albert who faces the daunting reality of meeting up in the afterworld with his deceased mother and father. And the brave men who are given the choice by their commanding officer to either stay at their stations or take their chances up on deck.

As the water begins to fill the forward compartments down below, Frederick makes his escape up through the decks and network of staircases. As the lifeboats are launched, he is asked if he can row and volunteers to help take passengers away from the ship as it slowly but inexorably is swallowed up by the ocean.

There’s the inevitable sting in the tail when he arrives back in England, as he is docked four days’ pay by the White Star Line, the owners of the Titanic, for its failure to reach its destination.

And as Frederick comes to terms with what has been described as one of the most infamous maritime tragedies in history, he is back at work four weeks after the disaster, working in the boiler rooms of White Star’s ocean liner Olympic.

Totally jaw dropping.

Boiler Room Six: A Titanic Story was at Theatre Royal in Bury St Edmunds on 3 June.

FOR DETAILS OF ITS CONTINUING TOUR, CLICK HERE