Juniper Blood at the Donmar Warehouse – review

Mike Bartlett is good at asking what if. What if Charles III had been forced to abdicate? (King Charles III) What if Donald Trump was sent to prison (The 47^th)? What if your friendly local doctor was in fact a seething psychopath (Doctor Foster)?

His new play Juniper Blood asks the biggest speculative question of all. What if the only way to save the planet and preserve your sanity is to turn back time, and live in harmony with nature? It is, of course, the question many survivalists are already asking, but Barlett frames his debate through the focus of a very English plot of land – Juniper Field – in Oxfordshire, where five conflicting visions of the future come into focus.

The result is a questing, knotty, philosophical piece, often circular and didactic but always utterly gripping as the arguments twist and turn. Juniper Blood does exactly what theatre has always done: offers a forum for debate, lining up the arguments with a clarity and courage that is rare.

Designer Ultz has turned the Donmar into a patch of the countryside, with a living bank of grass surrounding a wooden platform. Jo Joelson’s lighting opens the action in bright daylight – with house lights up – that modulates through different days as the action progresses. The sound design, by Helen Skiera, fills the space with birdsong.

Enter Lip, Sam Troughton, rugged and thoughtful, carrying a primitive piece of broken farm machinery and meditatively rolling a joint. He barely speaks as his peace is disturbed by 20-somethings Milly (Nadia Parkes) and Femi (Terique Jarrett), guests of his wife Ruth (Hattie Morahan), who dreams of organic self-sufficiency at their rural retreat. Milly, a self-obsessed neurotic is Ruth’s former step-daughter; smooth-talking Femi is off to Oxford in September to do “an MSC in contemporary rural ecology.”

The dinner party that they hold is completed by the boisterous arrival of neighbouring farmer Tony, played with savage subtlety by Jonathan Slinger. Like Lip, his family has farmed this land for centuries; unlike Lip, he is a believer in high yields, chemicals and making a profit.

Gradually, over three short acts, the arguments unfold as Lip becomes convinced by Femi’s theories that it is only possible to bring life back to the dead soil by rewilding, by going off grid, harvesting only what he needs. In Troughton’s gritty performance, he is gradually subsumed by mono-mania, prepared to turn his back on all the accoutrements of modern life to do that, including antibiotics if his child should need them. Femi, on the other hand, argues that capitalism can heal itself; providing the solutions to the destruction it has wrought.

All the other characters are pulled into this essential debate between idealism and pragmatism, or between different types of idealism. All are searching for happiness and a sense of belonging. Ruth, finely febrile in Morahan’s performance, wants to use her privilege and her wealth to live a balanced life, close to the land. Tony wants to return to the days when “We just lived, and the future was…good.” He also wants Ruth to love him.

Because this is a play by Bartlett, the writing is finely tuned, with an ear to contemporary concerns. It is also supremely funny. Tony has a fabulous line about therapy: “Thought I was a disastrous prick. Turns out none of it’s my fault!”, while Milly regards lack of self-care as disrespectful. “Actually, making an effort with your appearance is just good manners, part of engaging in society. I think f**king gobbling around twenty-four-seven, demonstrates contempt for your fellow man stroke woman stroke other.”

Because it is directed by James Macdonald, the production is equally intelligent, with quiet spaces between the dialogue, room for thoughts to grow and breathe. As he has shown with the plays of Caryl Churchill, which this at times resembles, he is remarkably sensitive to the invisible ties between characters. Every one of them, in a series of brilliantly nuanced performances, has both an interior life and a say in the arguments.

You never quite know which way Juniper Blood will turn, or what will happen. Even the ending is a surprise. It has the feeling of being ancient myth and a report from the front line. It is utterly absorbing.