One evening in October 2022, Marcus Decker headed out of the family home suggesting to his partner Holly that she watch the news the following morning. He wasn't able to return till 16 months later.
Marcus had been horrified by the news. Among other climate-connected disasters were the devastating floods in Pakistan that killed just under 700 children. He didn’t want to see more people die. Something had to be done to save lives. He would climb above the Dartford Bridge holding up traffic as a protest against the continued refusal of the UK government to phase out the fossil fuel culprit oil.
That moment is recalled just before the interval some ninety minutes into the story of his life, narrated by the actor Juliet Stevenson in an important and entertaining show that includes 26 songs performed by 17 bare-footed musicians. However, the first voice we hear singing is a brief recording of Marcus aged 4 back in Germany where he grew up with parents who wrote rebel songs.
The love of music is a key element in a journey which takes us with him across several continents to the family and friends that helped shape his vision of a different world. Having spent his early years with a mother and father who were setting up a village music school, at the age of 15, the opportunity to study abroad took him to Texas playing a saxophone in a school band and becoming an enthusiast for the songs of Hank Williams.
If anyone that night closed their eyes as Marcus sang Hank’s "Lonesome Blues", they might have imagined Hank was in the venue.
Back in Europe in 2018, with sea levels, air pollution and wildlife extinction at a new high, his concern for the environment was given an organisational focus when he came across Extinction Rebellion (XR). He learned Blythe Pepino’s urgent song "Emergency", which we hear sung by Marcus, Holly and her mother Sally Davies, who currently organises the London Climate Choir.
Drawn to London, Marcus taught music, fell in love with Holly and developed a stack of protest songs for different demonstrations. Unfortunately, the escalating climate crisis in 2022 was to prompt an action that led to a deliberate state injustice.
We arrive back from the interval to the cast singing "We Are the Change" and "Spiderman". Marcus, appearing on a high balcony of the theatre, explains how he and Morgan climbed the suspension wires over the QEII bridge of the Dartford Crossing and, 65 metres above the road, unfurled a huge banner reading "Just Stop Oil".
He was taken to a police cell, refused bail and six months later, to the surprise of legal experts, he was sentenced to two years and seven months in prison. To compound the injustice, the authorities threatened permanent deportation from his UK family.
Patrick Cullen, the father of Holly, sings "The Ballad of Marcus and Morgan" he wrote about the sequence which includes the words “Cut down the forests, burn frack and drill, But don’t shoot the messenger ‘Cos the truth you can’t kill. “
In prison, he put his musical talents to good use playing the piano for church services and setting up an inmate choir, though the songs had to be vetted, with "I Will Survive" and "Don’t Stop Me Now" being banned. However, the performers sang "Lovely Day", which became a favourite of the prisoners. Outside prison, others tried to help Marcus through protest marches, letters to MPs and fundraising for legal fees. The folk singer Peggy Seeger managed to get a guitar sent into the prison for him.
Holly often became a spokesperson for the campaign to keep her partner in the country. Playfully, she sings for us a version of "My Baby Just Cares for Me", a song associated with Nina Simone, adding lines such as “My baby don’t care for shoes, booze, cars… My baby just cares for trees, bees and me.”
The show is an exciting, incredibly well-performed, sometimes amusing musical journey, given depth by Juliet Stevenson’s clear narration, that never lost the audience’s attention.
Marcus is now electronically tagged (you might spot him during a theatre interval trying to recharge the battery) and has to report once a week to the Home Office in Croydon as he waits for a court date that will decide if he can remain in the UK with his partner and children.