REVIEW: 2071, Jerwood Theatre Downstairs ✭

2071

Jerwood Theatre Downstairs

7 November 2014

Shakespeare once said:

All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players.

Katie Mitchell is proving Shakespeare to be completely wrong in her production of 2071 now playing at the Royal Court.

Billed and promoted as "a play exploring the future of life on earth and climate change", 2071 may be many things, but a play it is not. Nothing theatrical happens. There is no engagement between stage and audience.

It is just one man, a chair, a small table, a glass of water and a lot of words - all static, dull and placed in front of some screens which swirl and mutate from shape to shape, pattern to pattern, graphic (in the sense of pencil, not shock) image to graphic image, at times reminiscent of the original opening credits for Doctor Who, but never really, in any meaningful sense, explaining, contextualising, clarifying or showing insight into those dull words.

This is not to say that the words are pointless. They are not. The information imparted here is vital to the survival of humanity as we know it. But if there is a clumsier, sillier and more boring way to impart those words I can't think of it. Katie Mitchell is in a league of her own.

Professor Chris Rapley CBE may be a wonderful scientist but he is no player and should not be charged with speaking for 75 long minutes to a paying audience who have been promised a play. He is a poor public speaker, and obviously nervous about the experience. His delivery is flat and enervating. He knows his subject (not so well that he does not constantly use an autocue) but is at a loss as to how to deliver the material.

This, of course, is not his fault. The fault lies not in the stars but with Katie Mitchell.

Rapley has co-written the 2071 monologue with Duncan MacMillan. Neither has seen that the material is too dense to be comprehended when delivered as a deathly dull lecture. If it was a radio play, you would turn it off or sand a table while you listened - it is simply impossible to engage with the density of the information about climate change sought to be imparted.

There are four designers (set, lighting, video and sound), two associate directors and a composer. Yet nothing here sizzles or startles.

Quite what three directors did is beyond me - Rapley sits in a chair and reads an autocue with videos whirling behind him.

Plays need actors and directors. If this work had been given to an actor, someone who knew how to speak and entrance an audience, and if there were visual aids to the understanding of the science and calamity being discussed, this might have been a powerful, disturbing and important work.

If only Katie Mitchell had taken some time to contemplate why and how Sir David Attenborough, Professor Brian Cox or Neil deGrasse Tyson explain complicated scientific subjects to rapturous audiences. Instead, a vital message has been deprived of a proper platform and a respected scientist has been publicly tortured.