Mike Bartlett, a prolific playwright, is probably still best known for his witty King Charles III. His latest play is very didactic, taxing for actors and audience alike, and also hard work for the assistant stage managers in scene changes.
The juniper tree represents “a place of renewal, rejuvenation, a place of healing”, and a place where we will be made whole once again.
Five actors sit and stand on a wooden platform with chairs and table on a rocky mound, surrounded by grass, and they talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk. The subject they debate is organic farming and self-sufficiency in an era of climate change.
The play is a warning to those idealistic urbanites who are thinking of leaving the city and making a new life as farmers in the country and trying to save the planet by rejecting modern technology and not destroying the soil and wildlife.
The conflict between idealism and pragmatism is what Bartlett’s drama is all about. I felt I was attending a lecture rather than a play. There are long monologues. An ecology student talks at extreme length. There are also over-long silences, The production, directed by James Macdonald, designed by Ultz, lasts two hours and 35 minutes, includes two intervals, and is heavy-going.
The cast is strong. The five actors are Hattie Morahan, Sam Troughton, Jonathan Slinger, Nadia Parkes and Terique Jarrett. The funniest comic scene is a singularly unromantic proposition.
The Donmar’s contribution to the environment is to have no printed programmes and only a digital one, which will, no doubt, disappoint some theatregoers. Fortunately, I am assured that this is only for this particular production.
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