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Picture: Robert Day Like There’s No TomorrowB2 Belgrade Theatre*** Like There’s No Tomorrow successfully links a global issue, climate change, back to the choices that everybody makes every day. Do we need a new phone, more clothes, a new car? Our choices may not make an immediate impact on our quality of life but there will be an impact further afield. This piece, through its main actor Oluwasemiore Kaji-Hausa as Maru, a chronic asthmatic, shows the immediate effect of air pollution as the park in which she plays is threatened with redevelopment as an up-market housing estate with its attendant infrastructure of roads and cars. Maru is nudging 13 and, as a teenager, has no voice in the debate on redevelopment orchestrated by sleazy local politician Bobby Brunt (Shachin Sharma) and with her friend Fin (Femi Themen) make a pledge together to tackle the issue of climate change head on. The louder voices are the older electorate, keen for promised better jobs, better housing and consumer goods they feel they have earned by working hard. Huge cracks appear in Maru’s new Ikea bedroom, across the city and across the world and there is a moment when the direct link to the other side of the globe is exposed as Asha (Seyi Olomolaiye) falls through the crack at Maru’s feet. She has lost her home and family through climate change and is keen that the ‘developed’ world takes heed. There are some useful subplots; my favourite is a story about a tree that provides shade and fruit and is a parallel and metaphor for the world in crisis and Maru’s parents (Ifecula Olomolaiye and Tillman Osici) take the book to a charity shop while refurbishing her bedroom. She needs to know the ending of the story to save the planet. Maru’s parents don’t understand, even with her asthma, that changes are required and, though they say there is nothing they can do, Maru eventually convinces them that change has to start somewhere. There is good use of music, singing and slick scene changes. Occasionally, the dialogue is drowned out by the sound effects which is a shame when this is a hard-hitting, useful and considered piece that deserves a wider audience. Directed by Justin Themen this Belgrade Young Company runs to 14-03-20. Jane Howard 11-03-20 |
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