Imagine sitting down for a chat with a boat person arriving illegally across the channel. They might tell you about the drought that had destroyed the land their ancestors had lived on for centuries, forcing them to abandon their home for food.
They might tell you how they crowded into a city where the social tensions of poverty and hunger were generating civil strife forcing them to move again, this time from the country of their birth.
Thus the UK’s historical production of greenhouse gases creates climate refugees.
This is the context to Gareth Watkins's play The Gentleman of Shalott, which deliberately echoes Tennyson’s ballad The Lady of Shalott.
A man lies on his bed. Outside can be heard the sound of war. Around him, there are various devices maintaining his isolated contact with the world. There is a large periscope that allows him to see what’s going on beyond his tower. Opposite is a device for speaking with a servant we never see. Alongside it is something resembling a laptop at which he flirtatiously swaps messages with potential male dates.
However, something ominous is happening outside. Shepherd tells of people fleeing a drought-stricken land. Page warns that a civil war is taking place and offers him passage on a boat out of the area.
Bored and complacent, our gentleman of the tower Martuni (Gareth Watkins) busies himself chatting with potential gay partners and occasionally masturbating under his clothes.
In the final moments of the show, on a darkened stage, we see the figure of our gentleman alone having left his island tower, steering his boat elsewhere.
Although this is a thoughtful play performed by a good actor, it does lack dramatic tension. Many of the audience will possibly not even register the context that is creating another boat person and instead perhaps be left thinking it a slow, not very exciting play about the brief, rather mundane and predictable conversations between gay men who never meet.