“Water”, a stage play by Filter and David Farr. Performed at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, London.

I really didn’t know what to expect tonight. Something multimedia, with on-stage mixing, and interactive theatre involving the audience…maybe. What I actually experienced from this, ostensibly climate change motivated, piece of theatre was an unexpected delight.

Firstly, the Lyric Theatre, of which the director of Water, David Farr, is artistic director. Enclosed in a facade of 90s modernism, the impressive internal build of the theatre, with its ornate mouldings and double tiered circle, seems determined to challenge any attempt to tame its historical presence – yet, like all good theatres, the beautiful acoustics bring you precisely where the sound engineer wants you. In the hands of a talent like Tim Phillips, looking for all the world like a Chemical Brother behind an aluminium desk, and almost always in semi-darkness, this odyssey of off-the-cuff sounds, mixing up such items as a rung wine glass, a popped cheek and the slap of a hand on the wooden stage, takes the performance into something that approaches full immersion theatre.

The story is unusual. Scientist and father of two, estranged from his wife and one of his children, takes the scientific and political world on with proclamations of imminent climate change – but this is 1981, and lobbied skepticism had yet to take hold, let alone the common knowledge that we really are changing the planet. Government adviser challenges a climatically ambivalent US Government, in the first of many congruent events taking place as the storyline develops. Adviser meets cave diver attempting a suicidal record attempt, while in a parallel world separated by the mere walls of a Vancouver hotel, the now dead scientist’s sons play out a family drama reflecting the two sides of a society that is being driven to take the easy option – the dive into a culture that consumes all who think they can control it.

No more needs to be said of the plot. It is almost incidental to the messages being put forward – subtly, almost unconsciously, through the actions of the balletically interweaving cast. Ferdy Roberts, who plays both father and the son who doesn’t want to take the cultural plunge, is at times heartbreakingly candid in his expression of grief and tortured indecision. The ensemble play like their lives depend on it and, let’s face it, our lives really do depend on understanding the vital messages that Water gets across so well.

If you are anywhere near London, then you have until 3 November to catch this unique piece of environmental theatre.

http://www.lyric.co.uk/pl295.html

Keith Farnish
www.theearthblog.org