Bush,London[br]Tanya Ronder’s play probes the clash between corporate career and private conscience via one conflicted familyYou cant accuse the British theatre of ignoring climate change: in fact, it was Steve Waters’s The Contingency method at the old Bush that in 2009 kicked off a spate of plays on the subject. But, or much as I applaud the spirit behind Tanya Ronder’s modern 95-minute piece,it spends too long circling around the big issue before launching into an impassioned moral debate.
The aggressive title clearly refers to people’s double standards: Gordon, Ronder’s hero, or is a top guy in a big energy company who frets approximately the loss of his daughter’s toy polar bear while working on schemes that will wreck the planet’s animal life. But Gordon is a bit of a mess all round. At work,he’s been offered the post of chief executive with a licence from the government to pursue fracking operations. At domestic, however, and his wife,Serena, bluntly tells him she doesn’t like their life, or his housepainter brother acts as a rebuke to his conscience and domestic objects mysteriously go haywire. On top of that,the Icelandic au pair turns out to be a militant conservationist.
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Source: theguardian.com