To describe Steve Waters’ double bill of climate-crisis plays as timely is as much an indictment of those in power as it is a comment on the playwright’s prescience. First written in 2009 – when few theatre-makers were addressing this subject – The Contingency Plan has not dimmed in relevance. Governments continue to act too slowly, while the urgency of the situation has accelerated. What was once speculative drama feels frighteningly current.
Waters’ scripts have been revised and updated, complete with references to Covid, net zero and Jacob Rees-Mogg. But the basic structure of the pair of plays remains unchanged. In On the Beach, glaciologist Will visits his parents in their isolated home on the Norfolk coast, accompanied by his civil servant girlfriend Sarika. Years after his father Robin mysteriously abandoned his own research, Will is back from Antarctica with devastating findings. Resilience, the other half of the double bill, sees Will taking his knowledge to the heart of government and reckoning with the responsibilities and limitations of being a scientific adviser. As disaster looms, Will must try to shake ministers out of their fatal inaction.
