Inventive company Kandinsky have built a following with devised pieces about subjects such as the housing crisis and an under-reported neurological disorder. Now they turn their attention to the travails of Gideon Mantell, a 19th-century trailblazer in paleontology whose experiences offer a surprising perspective on the long-standing tussle between science and religion.
The son of a politically radical Sussex shoemaker, Mantell grew up to be a doctor. He was also a tenacious amateur geologist who documented the fossils he found on the South Downs. His discoveries — notably the remains of a huge creature he called the iguanodon — brought him celebrity, yet pitted him against an Establishment for whom the Bible was still a copper-bottomed historical source.
Directed by James Yeatman, this 85-minute show is informative, and there are some sharp reflections on social class. But it’s also packed with goofy melodrama and quirky touches: oddments of material stand in for fossils, and hammy Latin chants represent the intransigence of traditionalists.
Underscored by Zac Gvirtzman’s piano, it’s performed by a cast of four that includes Janet Etuk as Mantell. Multi-tasking Sophie Steer and Hamish MacDougall inject comic verve, and Harriet Webb is amusingly lofty as Richard Owen, the anatomy professor who founded the Natural History Museum, coined the word “dinosaur” and injured Mantell’s reputation.
