Director Katie Mitchell’s pioneering eco-production is streets ahead of the pack in considering how theatre should respond to looming environmental crisis. It’s also a trying, preachy watch, even though its lone actor for this short Barbican run, Lydia West, invests her stage debut with much of the vulnerability and likeability she showed in Russell T Davies’s It’s a Sin.
The play, co-produced by Headlong, will be recreated in different cities by a local actor and crew, accompanied by a local choir each time, and even powered by 10 local cyclists pedalling bikes on stage: the energy they generate for lighting and sound is shown on two large digital displays. This low-mileage, low-carbon conceptual framework is far more sophisticated than the narrative of Miranda Rose Hall’s script.
