Aquatic Affairs Review by Will Winter

It’s a devilish question to be asked early in Aquatic Affairs, the uproariously funny comedy play which transformed Qtopia’s substation into an underwater laboratory from the 8th to 12th of September.

Anyone familiar with Rosie Waterland’s Just the Gist podcast (or with a vague interest in strange scientific history) would have likely stumbled into the story of Margaret Howe Lovatt, the volunteer scientific assistant in the 60s who attempted to teach dolphins on a US Virgin Island to speak English (or ‘American’, as the play’s fervently patriotic scientific crew call it). Of course, Lovatt is mostly fondly remembered for admitting to relieving one of the male dolphins by jerking it off, which is the part of the story which usually first catches people.

Writer and director Madeleine Palmer based the script for Aquatic Affairs on Lovatt’s real life after hearing Waterland’s podcast episode about the experiment, which made Waterland’s inclusion in the play all the more touching and remarkable. She played an older, wistful version of Lovatt, watching fondly as a doe-eyed younger version of herself (Madelaine Phipps) bonds with Peter, the first love of her life. Importantly, Peter is the male dolphin in question, played with all the seductive charm of a gross and horny teenage boy by Joss Arkley-Smith.

Palmer’s script built at a break-neck pace, throwing out more and more facts that made the real narrative all the more strange and remarkable. Did you know the experiment was funded by NASA during the space race? We learn quickly that Carl Sagan, famous American astronomer, played as a moustachioed audience surrogate by the strikingly funny Nala Davies, was the man who approved the research. He’s also the man who shut it down, wrenching Peter away from the human woman he so greatly loved after Sagan discovered the truth of their relationship.

The show felt like a remarkable blend of hosted podcast and grounded theatre: it’s a clean and guided narrative, with the farcical exposition and high-camp theatrics needed to propel such an implausibly real story into the stratosphere. It was a testament to the commitment of the cast and crew that watching Margaret, wearing a wetsuit, say goodbye to Peter, a human actor with a dolphin head, felt like a great and deeply emotional cinematic moment.

Nic You Lee’s set design deserved particular highlighting, with aquamarine pool tiles that seemed pulled from the 60s covering a multi-use floating stage. Smartly, the show was not held in captivity by this set piece, and keeping modern-day Lovatt and her adorably dumbfounded grandkids in the audience embankment easily transported us between the past and the present.

There’s a broader lesson to be learned here about telling the stories of infamous women. When Lovatt’s story first came to light, she called her connection with Peter ‘sensuous’ but mostly scientific. Headlines were printed quickly, painting their relationship as sexual and perverse, and Lovatt, like many women attached to a single salacious headline, became known simply as ‘the woman that gave a handjob to a dolphin’.

The play didn’t shy away from this fact, nor did it attempt to moralise the absurdity of the situation. What it did instead was paint her as a full person, imbued with dogged nationalistic pride, surrounded by men with too much money and access to LSD, and trying to find her purpose in life. The joke was not that Lovatt fell in love with a dolphin, but that she was able to develop such a relationship because everyone involved was blinded with such intense patriotism for the United States.

So yes, she jerked off a dolphin a few times, but she did it for you, America! And without her, we would never have had the charmingly ridiculous Aquatic Affairs, which, despite technical issues on the night, went swimmingly. For that, we can be grateful.

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Will Winter attended Aquatic Affairs at QTOPIA  on Wednesday 9 September.