The Heretic - 15th February 2011

The Royal Court theatre has always been a bit of a mystery to me. I saw a couple of plays upstairs in the late 1970's & 1980's, " Red Saturday" and " Salonika" but had never previously seen anything in the main house. But, thanks to the wonders of the Internet I managed to get hold of virtually the last seat ( amazingly in the front row) for Richard Bean's new play.

It always astonishes me that most theatre-goers avoid the front row like the plague. To me they are the best seats ( & rarely the dearest) as you have an unemcumbered view of the stage allowing you the perfect opportuntity to see (hopefully) great acting at close range.

The author's previous play " English People Very Nice" caused controversy at the National Theatre recently by tackling the thorny topic of racism. Tonight we saw him address another tricky modern topic, Climate change.

Juliet Stevenson plays Dr Diane Cassell a lecturer at York University, specialising in rising sea levels. Despite her line manager Professor Kevin Maloney running the Faculty of Earth sciences based on the principles of Climate change she is becoming increasingly sceptical and putting further valuable funding at risk.

This basic premise sounds very dry but the triumph of this writing is that I have rarely heard such genuine and regular belly laughs from any audience. It helps that they are joined by four beautifully crafted different characters, two youngsters both ( almost literally) driven to death by the concept of their planet collapsing around them, a zealous Security operative and a typically officious Human resources representative. They border on being stereo-types but Richard Bean manages to keep them real.

As the set changes in the second act from the confining domain of Diane's office to her home kitchen so the emphasis of the play alters. Following the consequences of her actions we are now in a domestic environment and watching a mother struggling to cope with her daughter growing up and moving out and her ex-lover trying to re-create a lost passion. They are all united by the climate change cause but it is now coming second behind the home drama unfolding about it.

The problem for any playwright is knowing how to end. For me the only draw-back to the whole evening was the rather old-fashioned, if crowd-pleasing ending. Following all the disturbing scenes that had proceeded it I found the finale belonged to a different era.

This was a pity as this had been a terrific state of the nation piece worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as another Royal Court theatre force of nature " Jerusalem". As ever a script is only as good as its cast and director Jeremy Herrin is fortunate to get Juliet Stevenson in tremendous form ( it must be written into her script that she must have at least one crying scene) and James Fleet proving an impressively strong foil to her in the dramatic scenes.

For me,though, the surprise of the evening were the blistering performances of the two youngest actors, Lydia Wilson and Johnny Flynn both passionately concerned about the planet, equally inept at dealing with other people but ultimately perfectly suited to living together in their unreal world.

Overall, this was an enjoyable play but not quite as hard-hitting as the subject deserves or possibly demands.