Given the scale of the environmental challenges facing their world, you can forgive teenagers for feeling pretty muddled. They know that action needs to be taken without delay; their parents and teachers preach patience and circumspection and tell them they’re too young to take matters into their own hands. For every steel-eyed Greta Thunberg, you can be sure there are a dozen or more like the title characters of this play, for whom fear for their future and anger at adults’ apathy will only exacerbate the maelstrom of teenage emotion.
Sixteen-year-old Zoe, suspended from school by a headteacher who deems her “too excitable”, strains with resolve and frustration. Through sheer force of character (AKA bossiness) she convinces her new neighbour, Rain, to drive her across country on his inherited motorcycle, from their west coast home to a protest against a polluting oil company in Philadelphia, where Zoe may or may not find her long-absent mother. Along the way, the naive pair get lost, fall in love and argue about what constitute legitimate forms of protest, before accidentally turning into the Bonnie and Clyde of glitter-bombing pipelines.
