British theatre prides itself on being contemporary, up-to-date – in a word, hot. So it’s odd that, over the past decade, there have been so few plays about climate change. While everyone has been talking about global warming, while climate change deniers have been branded the new fascists, and while well-publicised protesters have tried to stop electricity stations from functioning, British playwrights have – with only a couple of exceptions – blithely ignored the subject.
So Greenland, a new play about climate change now at the nation’s flagship theatre, is to be welcomed. Climate change is a big topic, so Greenland is a big play. So big, in fact, that it needed four playwrights to write it: Moira Buffini, Matt Charman, Penelope Skinner and Jack Thorne. It’s also big in ambition, big in content and big in theatricality. Likewise, it is fair to add that it has some big problems, too.
But first the good news: this is a play that takes climate change seriously, but with a human perspective – there are very few windy generalisations and there are regular brief showers of humour to moisten the potential aridity of the subject matter. There are three main stories: one is the tale of a young lad from Walthamstow who becomes an expert in arctic birds and sees the effects of climate change on their behaviour.
The second is the story of Lisa, a young activist who drops out of college and joins a protest group, where she meets the militant Dav. The third one is about Dr Ray Boykin, a scientist who models climate patterns, and fears that the future will be far worse than we imagine it. When he meets Phoebe, one of Ed Miliband’s advisors, and joins her at the 2009 Copenhagen United Nations Climate Change Conference, he witnesses the limits of a political solution to the world’s problems.
As well as these strands, there are plenty of vignettes: two engineers from Mali explain their take on Copenhagen; a young black guy meditates on choice; two lesbians quarrel about guilt and correct behaviour; activists embark on direct action. Similarly, there are a host of theatrical effects, from direct address to vivid projections, from flashing strobes to huge percussive effects. And there’s a rainstorm and a paper storm. Best of all, a polar bear is the piece’s most wonderful surprise.
When the bear eats a bird in one of the Greenland scenes, there is a splash of blood which is rendered on stage by the sudden appearance of some squares of red paper. This elegant and theatrical moment is typical of Bijan Sheibani’s production.
Now the bad news. While the play offers plenty of variety, most of what it tells us we already know. For anyone who has been following green politics, this is a sadly desiccated show.
The question of what we actually do about climate change is a vital one, but here it is not compellingly dramatised. In fact, the play is full of good-hearted meditations on choice, hope, the power of science and the debate between whether to trust politicians or to take matters into our own hands. Sadly, these are meditation lite – the play never really finds a thrilling dramatic image to clinch the argument. Even the polar bear, however cuddly, is hardly a new image of endangered nature.
So, despite a large ensemble cast and some fine individual performances, Greenland is two hours of engrossing, sometimes funny, occasionally frustrating, often striking, but never really overwhelming debate that at worst feels like a lecture and at best a soothing balm for liberal audience members who would like to be challenged, but just not very much.
