The mathematician and scientist Jacob Bronowski, whose groundbreaking 1973 series The Ascent of Man brought popular science to TV, took an optimistic view of human progress. But was he right in his rosy assessment of humanity and its ability to confront the challenges facing it and use past experience to create a better future?
Ava (Stella Blue Taylor), a young research scientist whose career is stalling, thinks that Bronowski was wrong. When she discovers her Tinder date is Bronowski’s grandson, Jamie (Andrew Strafford-Baker), in London to clear his grandfather’s house, she can’t wait to get inside the famous locked room in the house and uncover the secrets hidden within.
Melding fact and fiction in comfortable fashion, New Diorama’s ambitious, intelligent and moving show takes its inspiration from Yuval Harari’s book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. It spans three time frames: the present, Bronowski’s wartime career working for the government on a top secret project that led to the firebombing of Dresden and thousands of civilian deaths, and the distant past when our ancestors walked the earth. It considers the vestigial traits that we carry with us from the past and and what it is that truly makes us human. Violence? Self-interest? Our vivid imaginations? Our ability to make myths?
There is almost too much here to be squeezed into the brief running time, but directors David Byrne and Kate Stanley do sterling work to tell a story that unfolds with thriller-like precision and has real visual flair. It thunders along in compelling fashion as Ava’s instinct for survival kicks in, and both Bronowski’s past and the history of humanity is unearthed.
This is a show asking big questions and which has a genuine urgency as it poses the possibility that we are hurtling towards our own destruction and that all that may endure is our footprints in the sand. There are proper characters (Richard Delaney is moving as Bronowski, a man who optimistically celebrated human advancement by saying he would live longer than his grandfather and promptly dropped dead) and a questing intelligence in a piece that sees theatre as a place to tell stories and interrogate myths; one where we can use our imaginations to make the future. Which may just save us.
- At Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, until 28 August. Box office: 0131-556 6550.
