Theatreguide.London
www.theatreguide.london
Rain
and Zoe Save The World
Jermyn
Street Theatre February 2022
Zoe, the central character in Crystal Skillman’s play Rain and Zoe Save the World, is very concerned about climate change.
She is not the only one. In a survey of ten countries led by Bath University in 2021, nearly sixty per cent of young people between the ages of 16 and 25 said they were worried or very worried about climate change. You will see many of these young people on any demonstration, perhaps blocking roads or being carried off by police.
Zoe (Mei Henri) is determined to be part of the protests, so she persuades Rain (Jordan Benjamin), a lad living nearby, to use his dad’s motorbike to sneak away to the protest rally against East Coast Energy Solutions, where she believes her mother will also be.
Ill-equipped and with little plan on how they would get there, the journey becomes a series of mishaps and a coming of age story of two novice activists falling in love.
Getting stuck in Minnesota for a time, they discover a local pipeline that is dumping poisonous waste in a local lake killing its frogs, including a cute one that Rain is rather taken with.
Enraged by this, Rain blows up the company responsible, which is then closed down causing 11,000 people to lose their jobs.
On the run from the police, Zoe finds her mum 'burnt out' and barely able to talk in a sort of rest home. She gives Zoe a special flash drive and sends her on her way with the words 'give em hell.'
In outline, the play might have been an adventurous romantic coming of age story and even perhaps an important insight into the activists of a movement to stop climate change. But it is neither.
We don’t get any sense of why climate change is a problem beyond the dead frogs, and the activists are painted in a poor light as either stumbling into terrorism or becoming burnt out zombies.
The conversations between Zoe and Rain don’t really develop or conjure up a romance. The plot itself is full of improbable moments and dialogue.
However, there are some impressive aspects to the production, such as the two black-clad actors, Richard Holt and Salma Shaw, who play multiple parts, representing the motorbike ,and the entertaining performance of Richard Holt as the ghost motorbike dad of Rain, the geeky computer friend and of course the frog.
Keith
McKenna
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Review of Rain And Zoe Save The World - Jermyn Street Theatre 2022