Fire Fire: activism in the face of climate devastation

MARY CONWAY is disappointed by drama that, despite accomplished performances, cannot overcome an unfocused script

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FIRE FIRE at the Arcola is an 80-minute two-hander exploring the development of activism in the face of climate devastation. Or rather, it chronicles the impact of such activism on one man and one woman who meet by chance under a vast Essex sky.

Eddie is a working-class guy, gratefully retired from a gruelling life in the local oil refinery, a hazardous occupation that has already killed his brother with job-induced cancer. Paige is a long-committed political protester of middle-class leanings who fiercely opposes the oil refinery for its impact on the planet and global warming. The two seemingly have nothing in common, other than the shared burden of living under a now blazing sky where, as stated in the play, “the sun is no longer golden but blistering red.”

Climate change, for both characters, profoundly shocks by the minute. Yet the authorities still seem oblivious, and protesters and activists are mercilessly arrested on a daily basis and charged with terrorism.

The scenario is both familiar and deeply depressing. But what marks the show out is the excellent acting of Chris Simmons as Eddy and Gabrielle Brooks as Paige. Under the confident and skilled direction of Jennifer Tang, the two actors bring us truly accomplished performances that exploit the small theatre and give us up-close, in-depth character insight. We would expect no less: Simmons has an extensive TV pedigree, while Brooks’ impressive West End career includes a Laurence Olivier nomination.

Admittedly, John Webber’s play is pacy and heartfelt, bringing us a gradual closeness between the two characters as they reveal much of their separate backgrounds and eventually bond in a brutal and dramatic climax. But there are problems: the script itself, being very much a vehicle for the playwright’s own obsessions, somehow fails to reach dramatic resolution.

Even its opening sets us on a muddled path, as our two strangers are revealed arguing: a contrived dispute aimed to reveal their class difference but lacking drama and riddled with cliche. Paige, for instance, says she wants to use “the bathroom.” This aims to engender humour. Given they are in the middle of nowhere and two decades on from now, her use of such a staid old euphemism seems hardly probable. Also, when she acknowledges that her life partner is a woman, Eddy is thrown. Thirty years on from the legalisation of gay marriage, surely he would not be so taken aback. Little in the dialogue is new or revelatory.

The play proceeds to explore a range of issues: the iniquity of oil refining, the expression and necessity of activism, our relationship with the natural world, the shameful ineptitude of the authorities in the face of planetary disaster and the two different character profiles of Eddy and Paige.

However, that the world is burning up around them somehow never seems real, and their obsessions are still somehow mundane and predictable despite the supposedly dramatic setting.

A slickly produced production, but a play that never quite sorts its focus.

Runs until October 3. Box office: (020) 7503-1646, arcolatheatre.com

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