REVIEW: The Beautiful Future is Coming by Flora Wilson Brown at Jermyn Street (Footprints Festival), 30 January - 5 February 2024

‘Don’t be a fossil fool’ ★★★★ ½

Many climate change stories are either doomsday or an optimistic Utopia. It takes a balanced mind to create a story that combines the urgency of the climate situation with hope. And Flora Wilson Brown manages to make three interweaving stories in three different times and places and create both the sense of impending doom and ability to do something to change the trajectory.

Wilson Brown’s touching and compelling dialogue gets right into the heart of what is going on because of snippets of these intertwining stories, told with humour and humanity. The direction (Harry Tennison) of disparate characters and tales simultaneously on stage is beautifully seamless, moving from one story to another, sometimes with interleaved dialogue, and moving fluidly around the stage. Excellent lighting and sound design certainly aided this flow.

In New York, in 1854, Eunice (Sabrina Wu), a female scientist is trying to share her experimental findings with a male-dominated Royal Society in London and then in her own country with the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Her unstoppable drive to get her research (which is never clearly defined) is understandable when put in relation to her familial priorities. Wu has been busy with this Festival, as she had a major role in The Good John Proctor earlier in the season, performing the role of a child, which demonstrates her wonderful range.

The London story, set in 2027, feels the most relatable, not just because it is set closer to our present time, but because there is an emerging love story at its heart. The humour is also the most evident here through banter between the couple (Martha Watson Allpress, George Fletcher), and the visual humour such as a bag that proclaims: “Don’t be a fossil fool”. Watson Allpress plays Claire as comfortable in her own skin, light-hearted, and falling in love with a subordinate colleague. At the end of the play, in the most poetic manner, she devastates us with an emotional performance. Perhaps the only real issue with this ending is that this was interleaved with Eunice’s plaintive cries and served to disturb the moment rather than enhance it.

In 2100, in an isolated research lab in Svalbard two researchers are in need of external support and through their conversation we learn about the awful outcomes for the UK, from Birmingham to Cambridge, where land is no longer solid as rains and floods dominate. Despite the fear of the future in the midst of Ana’s (Pepter Lunkuse) pregnancy, again, there are moments of humour and human connection at the heart of it. Lunkuse evenly and composedly plays a conscientious mother-to-be, until she has to face fear in the face.

A special acknowledgement has to go to George Fletcher, who flexibly performed in each time period, changing accents, tone and pace to be switched to opposite a different woman, sometimes even mid-sentence which infused some comical moments, as John, Dan, and Malcolm. What lovely versatility to observe in one night!

Themes of the cycle of life arise naturally, as each scenario discusses motherhood and children. It makes sense to consider humanity’s origins during times of crisis and this is done so beautifully, using the different stages of considering raising children, being heavily pregnant, to having grown children. As the three women who are at the centre of the stories grapple with their own desires and self-hood, they also are conscious that children are tied to the future, beautiful or not.

Bill Gates recently hosted on his podcast Hannah Ritchie, author of Not the End of the World, in which she argues that there is reason for optimism in the midst of the gloom. The Beautiful Future is Coming seems to be in line with this narrative and this grand news should be shared widely with the rest of the world.

The Beautiful Future is Coming by Flora Wilson Brown at Jermyn Street (Footprints Festival), 30 January - 5 February 2024

Box Office https://www.jermynstreettheatre.co.uk/show/the-beautiful-future-is-coming/

Performed by Sabrina Wu, Martha Watson Allpress, Pepter Lunkuse, George Fletcher

Directed by Harry Tennison

Sound Designer: Anna Short

Lighting Designer: Nell Golledge

Reviewed by Mariam Mathew