Earthquakes in London - Oxford Playhouse, 1-5 November

Earthquakes in London is unlike any play I have seen before. It’s An Inconvenient Truth, by way of Top of the Pops and Chekov’s Three Sisters, with some apparently naked ukulele playing thrown in for good measure (though don’t just go for the ukulele, the scene’s quite brief). 

We are in the company of three sisters in contemporary London. Eldest sister Sarah, the Environmental Minister for the current coalition government, is trying to block plans for a new runway at Heathrow Airport, while at home her marriage is crumbling. Middle sister Freya is about to have a baby. She has a loving husband, but can’t seem to see past her terror of the future. And youngest sister Jasmine is aimless and angry, struggling to deal with life. 

Their lives develop and intertwine against the timely backdrop of the unsustainable stretching of the world’s resources, with reference being made to the earth’s population reaching seven billion this week. Their estranged father was paid off in the 1960s to talk down the catastrophic impact that increased air travel would cause to the environment (airlines do not come out of the play well at all) and he is now a prophet of doom, emphasising the spectre of apocalypse that haunts the play. 

The politics manages to avoid preachiness, and the relationships are written and performed brilliantly, but after a bleak and powerful first half, the second half crumbles slightly. There are some very moving scenes involving the family, but it seems that in order to stop the play from being incredibly depressing an unconvincing uplifting bit is tacked onto the end. Perhaps this was necessary, but I wish it had felt a little less like an afterthought. 

What saved the play from this fairly major flaw was partly the snappy, frequently funny dialogue, partly the innovative staging (including a well-used though slightly creaky revolving stage and a projected backdrop), and what I can only describe as the sheer bonkersness of the rest of it. Drunken dancing, surreal visions, terrifying yummy mummies on Hampstead Heath tormenting Freya to the backing beats of Goldfrapp, and a truly spectacular rendition of I Am Not a Robot by Marina and the Diamonds bring this play out of the rubble. 

Spectacle is the right word for Earthquakes in London. There is a lot going on, both plot-wise and ideas-wise, and exuberance carries it through. It might not change the world, but it may well leave you feeling differently about it, for a while at least. Until you get in your petrol car to go home to your central heated house, anyway.


Original review here