Aboard the Crystal Prophecy cruise ship, passengers distract themselves as they sail to the Arctic to see where the ice used to be. In Malaprop theatre company’s exuberantly inventive vision of the climate crisis, disparate elements are juggled gamely by an ensemble of five actors playing multiple roles, and by director Claire O’Reilly.
In the crammed script written by Carys D Coburn and the company, the cruise ship setting is a high-camp framework for a burlesque floorshow in which orange-feathered dancers double up as the many species of songbirds that have become extinct. Later they play a rabbit being poisoned by pesticides and a humpback whale choking on plastic. As he hosts the cabaret, the wild-eyed captain (Peter Corboy) takes pot shots at the birds, killing them off, with a mordant commentary that manages to allow some room for hope.
Switching from the near future back to 1969, then forward 100 years, the production’s guiding ideas are rooted in Rachel Carson’s pioneering environmental book, Silent Spring, here given to a nine-year-old girl, Ruth (Ghaliah Conroy), in 1960s Dublin. How Ruth’s story, and that of her violent, alcoholic father (Bláithín Mac Gabhann) and abused mother, Barbara (Thommas Kane Byrne), fits in the wider context is not immediately clear, but as we move to the next generation, it begins to make thematic sense.
Wrapping serious intent in absurdity, the deftly staged climax on the “deeply tacky, deeply ironic boat” is a disaster nobody anticipated because they assumed the world would have ended before it happened. Through the character of Ruth’s daughter, Ali (Maeve O’Mahony), her mother and grandmother’s experience of coping with abuse, of adapting, enduring and feeling powerless, is metaphorically linked to Carson’s questions about why people come to accept “the inferior or detrimental” as inevitable. Burning questions from this company of flamethrowers.
• At Project Arts Centre until 19 April; then touring until 5 June.
