Outlying Islands is a stunning example of environmental theatre made accessible.
Seeing Outlying Islands is an experience that cannot easily be divorced from the venue in which it is staged. Descending into the Jermyn Street Theatre is like crawling into an ant hole full of buried theatrical treasure. As you make your way down the stairs, posters of ongoing shows lining the narrow archway, you immediately get the sense that something very interesting awaits at the bottom of this tunnel. And the sensation of burrowing downwards into a quiet, dark, intimate hole was precisely what this production – which was ironically about a limitless island landscape – needed.
Written by Scottish playwright David Greig, Outlying Islands follows two British scientists and old university friends, John (Fred Woodley-Evans) and Robert (Bruce Langley). They have been assigned by the ministry to thoroughly document avian life on the island. It isn’t until later, of course, that the boys realize that the ministry’s intentions for their “mission” aren’t as straightforward or innocent as they were made out to be. Inspired by the true story of Gruinard Island in Scotland, the British government intends to use this island for the purposes of testing its bioweaponry – namely the anthrax bomb – before the outbreak of the Second World War.
Before the end of the first half, these young scientists have to reckon with their roles as appointed agents in the natural destruction of the island. In pursuing their love of ornithology, they lure the world closer to a devastating anthrax bomb and farther away from any hope of a habitable future for the birds. All the while, the spectre of war, like an outlying island, seems very far away. But just as they have been lured to this island, so does the storm of war sound every so often in the distance, the thunder growing louder and louder with every delicate, feathered creature John and Robert record.
Again, this seems like the kind of play that would beg for a large stage, huge effects, loud noises. Instead, it makes itself a perfectly suitable nest in the small elbow of the Jermyn Street Theatre.With the help of a masterful design team, including Sounder Designer Christopher Preece, Lighting Designer David Doyle, and Set & Costumer Designer Anna Lewis, and tied together by Director Jessica Lazar’s synchronous vision, the story of Outlying Islands becomes one of the simultaneous limitlessness and horror of the human imagination.
At the very beginning of the play, Robert describes the pull that outlying islands have on the human brain. The farther out an island is from the mainland, he posits, the more alluring the prospect of one day reaching that mysterious, rocky shore. With rare exceptions throughout the production, the design, movement, and story palpably manufacture this impression of being pushed and pulled, almost like a small boat on a giant sea. The compressed space of the Jermyn Street Theatre gives way to a vast ocean of creation and destruction, inviting us all on a visceral, expertly crafted subconscious experience.
In line with the play’s grander political goals, the metaphor of enticing outlying islands maps itself seamlessly onto its diverse tide pool of characters. Robert and John are hosted by the island’s leaseholder Uncle Kirk (Kevin McMonagle) and his niece Ellen (Whitney Kehinde). For a play that strongly positions itself as an environmental history piece, it was stunning to have my attention quietly shifted from the excitement of the birds and the landscape to the deep, dark undercurrents of human relationship seeping from Greig’s smooth text. It sends its audiences home with the message that, in order to understand our relationship to the Earth, we must first attempt to understand the relationships between two (or more) humans.
Outlying Islands very successfully grasps the most effective strands of environmental theatre – namely, its power to stimulate the audience’s imagination in an otherwise overwhelming landscape of history and science. That the production was able to evoke the natural world that it did in the intimate space of the Jermyn Street Theatre is a testament to its clear vision and talented team. Now in its second iteration on a London stage, let us hope Outlying Islands continues to fly.