Theatreguide.London
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The Theatreguide.London Review
Greenland
Lyttelton Theatre Spring 2011
This new play,
a committee-created work by writers Moira Buffini, Matt Charman,
Penelope Skinner and Jack Thorne, is really just a large-scale
big-budget bit of Theatre In Education, the sort of show that, in more
modest form, tours to schools, complete with reading lists and
discussion guides for teachers.
(A reading list is actually in the programme, and the National Theatre
runs discussions in the lobby after performances.)
The subject is global warming and what can or should be done about it.
Intermixed with bits of raw data are four or five plot lines (perhaps
each written by one of the co-authors?).
A government aide travels with the British delegation to the 2009 UN
conference on climate change after meeting with a scientist whose new
computer projections are far worse than the worst case scenarios being
considered.
Bird-taggers
in the Arctic find evidence of climate change in altered migration
patterns. A dedicated young woman searches for ways to help, from
supermarket sit-ins through ineffective hippy-dippy protest groups to
Greenpiece-like sabotage.
Unfortunately for prospects of profitable classroom discussion, these
and the other plot lines all lead to the conclusion that nothing will be
done, nothing can be done, or whatever can be done isn't big enough to
be worth doing.
Bijan Sheibani's production and Bunny Christie's design, as befitting
the National Theatre, are quite inventive and impressive, with a cast of
fifteen, full use of the Lyttelton's resources, film projections, a
light show, a flying supermarket cart (don't ask), a quite impressive
Panto polar bear and the invocation of the TV game show Deal Or No Deal
as a metaphor for something I didn't quite catch.
It is barely possible that this show will tell you something about the
subject that you don't already know and even, despite assuring you that
nothing useful can be done, make you want to do something.
But as an evening's theatre, it is all flash and filigree, with God
knows how big a carbon footprint.
Gerald Berkowitz
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