After the frigate Medusa ran aground off the coast of North Africa, 147 people who were denied space on the life boats, were crowded onto a hastily constructed wooden raft and cut adrift. After 13 days at sea, without food or water and after enduring unimaginable suffering, 15 survivors were picked up by the ship Argus.

This is the starting point for a devised piece of text-based, physical theatre, which characterises the showcase productions of the MA Theatre Lab.

What is the price of survival: despair, madness, murder? What laws defining civilised man need to be broken: vows of love, bonds of friendship and family, the final taboo of man devouring his brother? Does the determination to survive erase the veneer of centuries of man placing himself at the head of the animal kingdom? Does it disintegrate all moral and ethical boundaries?

Is the story itself a metaphor for the world we live in: inept leaders at the helm, a disastrous divisive present, a fatal disillusionment ahead?

Playwright Joshua Sobol's ground-breaking plays have been performed worldwide and include The Father (1995) and Alma (1996). Ghetto (1989) was directed for the National by Nicholas Hytner and won the Evening Standard and London Critics’ awards for Best Play of the Year.