A play about climate change that feels like a play about climate change
We need plays about climate change. John Webber valiantly rises to the challenge with Fire Fire but gives us a rather predictable premise: the year is 2040, the planet is hot, Cambridge University is now called BP Cambridge University, and climate protesters feel increasingly powerless and angry.
The play follows Paige and Eddie. Paige is an articulate and impassioned young woman, and is hugging trees when she disrupts the guests heading to Eddie’s brother’s funeral. She then wants a wee but Eddie, an older disenfranchised man, isn’t inclined to let her in. They have a frosty disagreement about how anger should be channeled towards the oil companies. Then they keep on bumping into each other – in tenuous circumstances – and having the same frosty conversations again and again. Their dialogue is dense with thoughts, hard to follow, and rarely relates to the actual moment the characters are standing in (a lot of: ‘if you have anger on your side, use it’). Dispersed between these scenes are monologues. Eddie talks aimlessly about the sky while Paige spews facts about burial grounds.
Emerging from this talk, we learn that Paige’s anger is linked to her being adopted, Eddie is ill, and that they both dream Paige is a climate messiah. Eddie eventually decides to join her in protest. But their relationship lacks connection and warmth; it is unconvincing. The production doesn’t know how to end; there are multiple final moments that fail to deliver a decisive conclusion. At one point there is a ritualistic sequence where Paige and Eddie beat sticks, invoke “Mother Earth” and call for Boudicca. It feels awkward and too tonally disconnected from the reflective musings that preceded it. The best dramatic tension comes when Eddie prepares to self-immobilise but the gravitas his brilliant acting warrants is diluted by the script’s prolonged wanderings.
The set is aesthetic (a dirt pit surrounded by boxes and skinny lights). But the already abstracted play might have benefited from a set that felt more real. The sound, however, is atmospheric and good.
The message of Fire Fire is it’s ultimate saving grace. It shows us how climate anger can bring people together and lead people to extraordinary bravery. But it does so by discussing ideas, not people. Webber has set out to write a play about climate change, and the audience can feel it.
Fire Fire is on at Arcola Theatre from 9th Sept to 3rd Oct. https://www.arcolatheatre.com/event/fire-fire/