The Heretic

Synopsis

"I’m a scientist. I don’t "believe" in anything." The study of climate science is the cool degree at the university where Dr Diane Cassell is a lead academic in Earth Sciences. At odds with the orthodoxy over man-made climate change, she finds herself increasingly vilified and is forced to ask if the issue is political as well as personal. Could the belief in anthropogenic global warming be the most attractive religion of the 21st century?

Our Review:

1 October 2012

Richard Bean’s intellectually rigorous The Heretic is a bracing change in an era of dumbed-down entertainment. But that doesn’t make it perfect. As the play was partly prompted by scientific inaccuracies in the documentary An Inconvenient Truth we can assume that the various theories and arguments it puts forward will endure scrutiny. But there are so many points of view that, in the end, the audience cannot verify all of them and has to fall back on the old standby of putting trust in the character we like most.
 
This is Dr. Diane Cassell (played with academic perception by Cate Hamer) who challenges the scientific basis of current populist beliefs on climate change and so threatens a lucrative contract at her university, puts her job at risk and attracts death threats. Hamer makes Cassell a daunting but movingly vulnerable character. She shows someone committed to objective facts rather than the clichéd fanatic who is so obsessed by ...

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