It’s an environmental epic, an ecological extravaganza. British playwright Mike Bartlett’s Earthquakes in London, now in a West Coast premiere at Rogue Machine, has a cast of seventeen actors playing nearly one hundred characters (vividly costumed by Halei Parker). The production, which also features video projection, countless lighting and sound cues, several song and dance routines, runs close to three hours. All this in a small theater seating some 75 people! Hats off to Rogue Machine for taking on such an ambitious and costly project—and for succeeding so impressively with it. Earthquakes in London was first performed in 2010 by the National Theatre in the U.K., where its warning about the dire consequences of pollution and climate change shook people up. Now the warning has been repeated ten years later at Rogue Machine with a similar result. Question is, will the large world beyond the confines of the theater also respond to the play’s cautionary message? The play roughly follows the fortunes of three sisters in contemporary England, though their black-hearted, nihilistic father, Robert (Ron Bottita), lives in Scotland. Sarah (Anna Khaja), the eldest, is political and successful, the country’s Minister of the Environment. Jasmine (Taylor Shurte) is the youngest and her opposite: a rebel and a hell-raiser. Caught between them is Freya (Ava Bogle), who is pregnant—and dazed and confused. Should she bring a child (which she never wanted) into a world whose blighted future (carbon poisoning, floods, fires, wars) promises nothing but pain and horror? The father, a disillusioned environmentalist, thinks it would be a sin for her to give birth. Her husband Steve (James Liebman) can’t bear the thought that she might abort but has little influence over her owing to the failure of their marriage. So Freya wanders through the troubled world of the play, clutching her swollen belly, an Everywoman crying out for help and guidance. Sarah meanwhile briskly occupies herself with ministerial business: fighting to persuade the airline industry to cut back on emissions. Aiding her is a young man, an environmental researcher (Paul Stanko) whose work shows just how poisonous to the earth’s atmosphere is air travel. But just when it looks as if their combined efforts will result in legislative restraints, the airlines go on the counter-attack. Simon (Michael James Bell) and Daniel (Turner Frankovsky), two corporate sharks, go to work on Sarah and the researcher, co-opting them with their offer of fat, cushy jobs with their employers. It would be impossible in a brief review to sum up all the action in Earthquakes in London and to describe each and every one of its large cast of characters. Suffice to say that the play goes deep into the battle to save Mother Earth from the ravages of man-made pollution and degradation. Bartlett uses every weapon in his theatrical arsenal to dramatize his story: agit-prop, bawdy humor, satire, realism, fanciful touches, snatches of song, etc. The result is a work of boldness and originality, a one-of-a-kind drama that challenges us to rethink the way we live.
