Reviews

Water

4 February 2011

Another minimalist industrial stage, another play interweaving domestic narratives with the political implications of fighting climate change. Arriving shortly after the National’s recently opened Greenland, theatre company Filter and director David Farr‘s collaboration is everything that production strives to be but misses – animated, dynamic with storytelling at the very heart of the piece.

With two very different brothers thrust together to deal with the death of their father – a pioneering marine biologist – we see yet another fictitious forward-looking scientist portrayed on stage, vindicated 30 years on by the world waking up to the problems of global warming. Ferdy Roberts gives a compelling performance as both the eloquent academic and the reclusive son he marginalised.

Victoria Moseley plays a career politician facing the bureaucratic wrangling of climate change negotiations, whilst simultaneously walking the political tightrope of coalition politics, coupled in an unlikely pair with a deep water cave diver. Oliver Dimsdale‘s portrayal of attempts to break the 1000ft depth mark exploring a cave system ominously called “The Lung” are created with the required intensely on stage.

Filter are a company unafraid of technology and play with sound and video throughout. With a pair of glossy flat screen TVs floating across the stage, an antique over head projector thrown in for good measure and live sound effects and music from on-stage musician Tim Phillips the production never misses a beat.

The work of scientists and politicians in the climate change debate has been held up to frequent artistic scrutiny in recent productions – the National’s Greenland and Earthquakes in London spring to mind – but whilst we have been presented with a crop of flawed, anoraked heroes who tried to warn the world about global warming in the 1980s and before, these plays seem to avoid asking harder questions of their audiences.

Water unfortunately joins a collection of plays reflecting what we see in our papers on a daily basis, the climate change debate underscoring but not given enough of a compelling enough airing to break out of the performance.