Alistair Beaton’s forte is topical satire. His most recent piece, The Accidental Leader, pre-empted events by showing the shadow cabinet rebelling against Jeremy Corbyn. Now he takes on the topic of fracking (helpfully defined in the programme as “a process of mechanically liberating oil or gas direct from shale”), which has prompted angry protest, not least in rural Sussex. The first thing to say is that the play is very funny, even if it gives short shrift to the pro-fracking argument.
Beaton’s play is set in the near future – where Boris Johnson has just resigned as foreign secretary, having become an international pariah – and interweaves two plot strands. One deals with a retired medieval historian, Elizabeth, who is driven from writing letters to the newspapers into direct action by her horror at the environmental consequences of fracking. The other involves a PR guru, Joe, who specialises in reputation management and puts a gloss on the activities of a company that aims to start drilling in the fictional village of Fernstock. What starts as an Ayckbournish comedy, with a public meeting bedevilled by a faulty amplification system, turns into a full-on endorsement of unpeaceful protest.
I suspect the play would be even stronger if it gave some weight to the advocates of fracking. As it is, even the energy company boss, although a decent man, sanctions the disposal of toxic waste into a large river. But no one says satire has to be fair and the play’s big strength lies in its portrait of the diabolically smart, amoral PR man. He forbids his client to use the word “fracking” because of its ugly sound and sexual connotations, shows how an ad campaign based on reassurance turns to one playing on public fear and buys off a wavering local councillor through naked bribery. While he embodies everything Beaton detests about contemporary capitalism, the character gives the play its own rampant energy.
The unholy Joe is played, in Richard Wilson’s fast-moving production, by Oliver Chris with exactly the right blend of public suavity and private contempt for his client and for his campaigning opponents. Beaton also avoids the trap of turning the anti-fracking community into self-righteous do-gooders. Anne Reid plays Elizabeth excellently as a middle-class woman who instinctively shuns the limelight and who is drawn reluctantly into the belief that direct action is the only answer when democracy fails. James Bolam is equally good as her disgruntled husband who punctures the myth of the rural idyll by moaning “another aromatherapist is setting up in the village”. Michael Simkins as the fraught energy boss and Freddie Meredith as a green-haired protester also fill out less well-developed roles.
The play is a buoyant addition to the swelling ranks of environmental dramas. It makes its points not through dialectic but through dark comedy, and endorses direct action while admitting that: “We support the right to protest as long as it doesn’t change anything.” Yet in the case of fracking, you feel it just might.
- At Minerva theatre, Chichester, until 6 August. Box office: 01243 781312.
