Slowly, with purpose, three sheets are draped across the stage and become the sea. On that sea, boats sail. Eventually, there are houses lifted out of the water on sticks as the shadows show us a single woman, M, in her home. We then have her sailing back out onto the sea in search of the produce to sustain herself. She dives for her treasure and finds all sorts of debris on the ocean floor as she searches for the pearls and oyster shells she needs to survive.
When a typhoon hits, and she is pregnant, other houses are demolished leaving her, and then her daughter’s, home intact as the next generation are taken to the ocean’s floor to learn more about the resurgence, the regeneration of the world needed to sustain us all.
Based loosely on the work of environmentalist James Lovelock, this is a show that manages to draw you into its folds, which are revealed in a ponderous manner. There is a visual beauty at play, which has theatrical trickery and inventiveness at its highest point when Blue Raincoat deep dive into the ocean. Puppetry lends itself in a highly imaginative manner to the idea of scale, not just how tiny we are in comparison to the problem, but the practicality of how to show us the darkest depths below the surface of the water whilst still being on dry land.
Here we have a company—John Carty, Sandra O Malley, Brian F Devaney, Áine Ní Laoghaire and Aisling Mannion—simply and beautifully crafting their execution of a simple tale. This is a story that could be lost in an ocean of high-handed morality, but simply sticks to the narrative instead.
Niall Henry’s direction is ponderous, perhaps to allow us to contemplate, consider and comprehend the totality of the issue with which it is struggling, the climate emergency, though Lovelock posited a thesis that the planet is well able to self-regulate. The working of the ocean floor, with debris being collected and piled so that shells can be stored amongst it, perhaps a hint at hope, rather than the delivery of an unpalatable thought—it is already too late.
At its most powerful, the visual nature of the piece leaves you in awe, whilst the pace of it can feel less like a powerful theatrical communication, more of a slow burn that needs to make the point before the point is forgotten. It has a tremendous soundscape, which adds to the mellowness, whilst the lighting adds some real drama, though not enough to heighten the effect of it being so contemplative. And so, whilst you can marvel at its beauty, you may have missed the point whilst waiting for the storms to end.