This is a daft play that works. Paul Lucas’s play about what vets get up to when they decide that they hate mankind, a dilemma that they try to resolve by living by the sea and rescuing star fish. The play’s title comes from the their life’s resolve to collect the starfish from the high tide, keep them in a bath overnight and throw them back in the morning. Not a very enterprising plot for a new play, but add to this a dying beekeeper found on the beach, who they try to ignore, and you have the ingredients for a very strange black comedy. Admirably suited to radio and expect to hear it sometime in the future.

Slippy, dressed in beekeeper’s garb, is admirably played by Fred Ridgeway as he tries to pull himself to the nearest telephone box. He gets no help from convinced misanthrope Jess (Eleanor Tremain) who lives in the nearby house with Tom (Ed Waters), a dithery unsure convert to the hermit’s life. They go through various routines trying to live out their new found beliefs against the unfolding events, but not even they could have foreseen what the eventual outcome would be. There are various speeches about what they think their new values are. All this played with amusing, underlying wit in a script that tends to make the story unbelievable. However, the audience chuckle their way through a short evening entertainment and go home wondering.

Timothy Sheader’s direction was just right as the cast worked against a set of bare essentials that in the end did not detract from a satirical evening at the theatre. © BA

“The Star Throwers” is in at the McCarthy in Scarborough from the 19th of February until the 2nd of March, 2002.