A lonely whale researcher, the birth of a pirate radio station, the science of sonar (as demonstrated using a pair of ukeleles), and the real life story of the 52hz whale are woven together in Dumbstruck, an ambitious and rather uneven tale by the band-cum-theatre troupe Fine Chisel. The company ricochet us around from lecture halls to isolated islands and the wide blue sea, but the storytelling is rather too fragmented to gain real momentum.

The storytelling is as dispersed as a distant pod of whales at sea: story intercuts song interrupts story offering us a series of snapshots of feeling and incident but with little sense of their build. So the play is rather like a curate’s egg – full of ideas and curiosity, and also of many forms, including a nifty bit of puppetry with ukeleles of various scales and some more abstract movement sequences. But, without the engine of a story at its heart (the revelation of what’s at stake for our scientists comes, to my mind, too late to drive the story on and there’s a narrative misstep in emphasising so much of the mystery of the whale) the formal flourishes can’t take us anywhere new.

There’s some interesting characterisation in here and the ensemble work fluidly and fluently. The set hides some good surprises and is nicely released. The pirate radio sub-plot’s entertaining, though you can’t help feeling that it’s in there only to serve the company-as-band idea (see early Little Bulb work for a more successful integration of this trope). But ultimately, even with the goodwill the company earns, the show drags and is missing a definitive hook at its heart.