Tim Laycock

Storm Boy - the play Tim Laycock

One of the finest true stories to come out of the lives of the Life Boat Crews in the southwest corner of England: Lynmouth in Devon. Set in 1899, the play is inspired by the famous "Overland Launch" of the Lynmouth Life Boat, which was dragged in a terrible storm by its crew for 14 miles over Exmoor to launch at the more sheltered Porlock Weir. This award-winning play has a variety of lively and sombre songs, from haunting sea chanties to Exmoor folk songs--mixed in with original tunes, that punctuate the comic and tragic moments of this inspiring story. Twin brothers, Alfie and William Teale, have grown up wanting nothing more than to become lifeboat men. As they near their 16th birthdays, William gets his dream; for, you see, Alfie, because he had suffered some brain damage at birth, is judged too 'simple' by the Life Boat Captain. Storm Boy is the moving tale of Alfie's struggle to be treated with fairness and equality in a harsh Victorian world. Then in a moment of crisis at sea, with William on a ship floundering and about to sink, all the lifeboat men - including a newly conscripted Alfie - risk life and limb in a fourteen mile trek across Exmoor in order to rescue the men of William's stricken ship in The Bristol Channel, off the West coast of England. The final moments of this play will tear your heart out as the brothers make a decision that endangers them both.