The Contingency Plan
Bush Theatre, London
FOR years, I have been moaning about the lack of plays that deal with climate change, surely one of the most pressing of all political subjects. Now, I can complain no more. Steve Waters’ gripping double bill, The Contingency Plan, is both a welcome addition to the canon of contemporary plays that engage with difficult issues and a definitive exploration of the subject.
Set in the near future, it imagines two horrors: first, a Britain as a country ruled by a newly-elected Tory government and, second, Britain as a land threatened by catastrophic flooding due to accelerating climate change. But the great achievement of Waters’ two plays is that they ground the political story firmly in the soil of a family drama.
In the first play, On the Beach, Will, a glaciologist working in Antarctica, returns to his East Anglian coastal home to introduce his new girlfriend, Sarika, a top civil servant, to his parents. He also needs to tell his father, Robin, that he has accepted a job advising the government about climate change. This is tricky, because some 40 years previously his
father had fallen out with a fellow scientist, Colin, about the causes of global warming. Colin has gone on to become the top government expert while the bitterly disillusioned Robin has retired by the sea, whose levels are relentlessly rising.
In the second play, Resilience, the location is Whitehall and Sarika introduces Will to the two new Conservative ministers, Tessa and Chris. As they struggle with what to do to mitigate the immediate effects of extreme weather conditions, Will and Colin fight over the contingency plan. While Colin believes that gradual mitigation of the effects of sea level rises will be enough, Will insists that only drastic measures – evacuation, new flood defences and a carbon-free lifestyle – will have any effect.
Watching this confrontation, Tessa and Chris are quick to see political advantages for themselves and for their differing principles of moral renewal and free-market economics (yes, it’s a horror story). Resilience heats up considerably when the rivalry between Will and Colin, with its basis in Will’s father’s old conflict with his fellow scientist, falls into the hands of powerful government figures who also have psychological axes to grind.
Written with a wonderful mix of the personal and the political, Waters’ intelligent and engrossing drama shows how the motivation for scientific research sometimes comes from familial wounds, and how politicians often have what can charitably be described as mixed motives. But as well as cerebral stimulation, the plays also offer theatrical delights.
On the Beach, directed by Michael Longhust, has a glorious scene in which the obsessive Robin wheels out a model that, using real water, shows the effects of rising sea levels. In Resilience, directed by Tamara Harvey, Colin illustrates the interdependence of nature by using metres of bright green twine.
Although On the Beach suffers from a noticeable deflation in its second half, the cumulative effect of both plays is energising, due principally to Waters’ use of hilarious one-liners, as well as an appealingly ironic doubling of two actors. Robin Soans, who plays Robin in the first piece, then plays his rival, Colin, in the second. Susan Brown is first Robin’s homely wife and then the sternly ambitious Tessa.
Geoffrey Streatfeild’s sincere Will grows visibly through his confrontations with Soans as both his father and then as his fellow scientist while Stephanie Street’s Sarika is excellent throughout. As Chris, David Bark-Jones oozes the typical politician’s emollience.
Whether seen as stand-alone plays or taken together, Waters’ vision of climate change is both grimly convincing and highly entertaining.
Aleks Sierz
