The last twenty minutes of Eric’s Tales of the Sea are heart-wrenchingly powerful. The show moves from vivid and rich comic descriptions of life onboard the submarine where Eric spent years to the terrors of seeing a friend struggling underwater at depths below six hundred metres; the audience realises they are no longer in the company of a funny raconteur. The mastery of his storytelling and the sheer emotive power that emerges from the specificities of his true-life experience is simply mesmerising. Elsewhere in the hour, we see Eric fiddling for five minutes with a faulty projector whilst bantering with the audience about the Olympics and recounting an anecdote about group masturbation.
The show’s occasionally uneven nature emerges from its honesty and its simplicity as we watch a man onstage, telling us vivid stories from his life as a submariner. It’s this completely unpretentious, natural ability to tell stories which wouldn’t sound out of place in a pub - the numerous pranks pulled on Eric through his teenage years in the navy, for example - which sets the scene for occasional moments of breathtaking beauty and quiet dignity that take you by surprise. Dressed in a baggy white pullover and decorating his life story with nothing more than his honesty, clarity and a desire to connect with his audience, he describes with verve and vigour his experience with his hair-raising basic training, his fear of sharks, and the best way to hide a hangover from a captain. When he describes the feeling of swimming in the Bahamas as one he would recall forever, you suspect you might not forget it either.
You’ll leave the show knowing a lot of detailed information about submarines. Sometimes the density of these facts swamps the comic potential of his tales. However, this is all part of and parcel of a life well lived, effortlessly and open-heartedly bought to life. Under all the water, this show has a beating heart.
