Across three interconnecting stories featuring three separate couples across nearly three centuries, the past, present and future of the climate crisis is explored in Flora Wilson Brown’s compassionate but gloomy play. In 1856 New York, scientist Eunice (the real-life Eunice Newton Foote, played by Phoebe Thomas) conducts ground-breaking experiments into the atmospheric effects of CO2, yet is patronised as an ‘amateur’ by the complacent scientific world and her husband John (Matt Whitchurch).
Meanwhile in 2027 London, Claire (Nina Singh) and Dan (Jyuddah James) are young marketing executives working on environmental projects, whose developing romance is thrown into dark and unknown territories by an unexpected urban flash-flood which affects Dan’s mother, sending him into a deep and spiralling climate terror. Finally in 2100, in a seed vault hidden below Svalbard, Ana (Rosie Dwyer) discovers she’s pregnant as her co-researcher Malcolm (James Bradwell) waits for news of the three-month storm which has trapped them here breaking.
Nancy Medina directs compelling performances out of all six actors, and there are escalating shocks which keep the audience gripped, particularly in the present and future stories. Yet in a landscape where climate crisis tales are proliferating, this piece of writing offers effective illumination but not a whole lot of new insight, beyond a general sense that life tries to find a way even in extremes.
The Beautiful Future is Coming, Traverse Theatre, until 24 Aug (not 11, 18), 7.15pm