REVIEW: The Contingency Plan @ Sheffield Theatres

Thanks to a quirk of scheduling, myself and your friendly neighbourhood editor, Joe Food, tag-teamed this double header of climate change-themed plays (not sure if that worsens our carbon footprint or not, but I digress).

The two interweaving plays, On the Beach and Resilience, together known as The Contingency Plan, raise the temperature on the imminent threat of climate disaster, and it was the former that I headed down to the celebrated Crucible stage to check out last week, while Joe caught the politically charged Resilience.

The two plays are intended to work as standalone productions, and the writing definitely succeeds in this, however, from our subsequent office discussions, it became clear that, much like their recent production of ROCK/PAPER/SCISSORS (an even more ambitious three header!), there is more context to be had when seen as a double-bill, with one providing the political backdrop to the human drama of the other.

First produced in 2009, at The Bush Theatre, writer Steve Waters has brought both plays bang up to date – or as bang up to date as our ever-changing political landscape allows – through conversations with the British Antarctic Survey, the world leading centre for polar science and polar operations.

If climate change was a hot topic twelve years ago, it’s positively scorched earth stuff now and predictably, this brand new production for Sheffield Theatres, directed by Chelsea Walker, is an eye-wateringly pessimistic take on our current situation, played out to its inevitable stormy conclusion with extremely dramatic consequences.

The action, or inaction as is probably more accurate, is set in Norfolk, a county famed for its flatland and reported status as the first area in the UK to find itself in the drink, should sea levels rise.

Ageing eco-warriors Robin and Jenny live a self-sufficient life on their salt marsh located home; growing and foraging their own food (see the much-maligned sea kale), brewing their own drinks, and renouncing the comforts of modern life like mobile phones and the Internet.

Robin is a former Antarctic glaciologist who has built a model to show how rising sea levels could cause catastrophic impact to their precariously placed property. Will, their son, has just returned home from a stint continuing his father’s work of 40 year’s previous at the British Antarctic Survey, where he met his new love-interest Sarika, who herself works as a civil servant to the government minister in charge of matters of climate change.

Horrified at the change to the environment that he has seen on the Antarctic Peninsula, Will is determined, with the help of Sarika, to work with the government to alert them of the imminent dangers.

In turn, Robin is horrified that Will is throwing away his research position to work in London. Throughout, we learn more about Robin’s reasoning, his stubbornness, his past, and what he learned and lost back in his research days. The first act of the play is centred on the tension between the two generations, with lots of frosty exchanges that smatter in the science underpinning the drama.

The second act, and easily my favourite section of the play, ramps up the drama, cleverly using the staging, a big glass box of a metaphor, to hammer home its message and the futility of current efforts – as I said, it’s pessimistic stuff.

But, in the face of what we know, it needs to be pessimistic. It needs to be hard-hitting. It needs to shock. So, more reminiscent of dystopia like Threads than a standard polemic on climate change, you won’t get a light-hearted romp here, but you might learn a thing or two.

Picking up the story in Resilience, the onus shifts from the personal to the political. In Westminster we meet scientific advisor Nick, an old rival of Will’s father, who appears to favour pragmatism over radical action when it comes to tackling climate change. He reports to government ministers Tessa Fortnum and Chris Casson: a Brexit-supporting career politician with a penchant for populism (hello, Nadine Dorries?) and your archetypal dyed-in-the-wool Oxbridge Tory, all self-entitled ebullience and zero time entertaining for the finer details.

After some wrangling, Sarika manages to get Will and his stark predictions for imminent disaster in front of the ministers. Despite cries of hyperbole from Nick, the young researcher’s panicked presentation manages to persuade Chris, either through a genuine sense of moral duty or hopes of being the minister who saved the day, to change tack and abandon caution in favour of a full commitment to tough measures to protect people from the storm. However, as Will discovers to his chagrin, when ministers make costly calls those actions require instant justification, as the cut and thrust world of modern-day politics rarely rewards playing it safe.

The humour in the first half of Resilience is plentiful, if not slightly repetitive. There’s a lot of ‘Tories bamboozled by the science’ laughs, which begin to wear a little thin eventually, but it does provide a solid enough foil for Will’s increasingly palpable state of agitation while attempting to deliver his message. The second half is all frantic action coupled with suspense as events build towards what appears to be oncoming disaster.

Unsurprisingly, the ending is a poignant one. The sense of helplessness always near to the surface finally spills over, and after seeing the personal and political realities of climate change explored on stage, audiences who watched The Contingency Plan are left pondering one main question: are we really doing enough to save ourselves?