As Waters Rise review – dystopian climate drama feels close to home
Ben Weatherill’s audio play is set in the year 2025 when a flood has left Britain in a state of emergency. There is social inequality, government inaction and political protest. A few months ago, this might have been considered a straight-up dystopia. Now it feels far closer to home.
The play is part of Shifting Tides, the Almeida’s digital festival exploring the intersections between art and the climate crisis, performed by and for young people. Conceived last autumn, it was due to be performed on stage. “It’s mad how quickly the world can change, right?” says one character who might be speaking of the panic and confusion at the start of lockdown.
Directed by Alex Brown, actors aged between 14 and 18 from the Almeida Young Company recorded their parts in isolation. The play is in three parts, connected more by theme than characters. Each episode begins with a babble of voices, from newscasters reporting growing homelessness to protesters who speak of political irresponsibility: “People knew this would happen. They just didn’t care.”
The voices create a soundboard of social unrest alongside growing state control and contested civic freedoms. The three parts seem to be asking the central question of how young people might mobilise for political activism and change in the midst of this.
The first episode finds an answer in an anarchic redistribution of wealth and Robin Hood criminality. The flood lays social division bare among a group of friends: Zack (Muhammad Abdraheman) finds his family destitute while Alyssa (Vigs Otite) remains fortified by privilege – and flood defences around her home. The group hatches a plan to steal from the rich to give to the poor and action comes with heist-movie humour as well as teen-drama dynamics.
The second part is by far the sparkiest, taking the government’s controversial anti-terrorist Prevent programme and giving it a satirical twist. The characters being “de-radicalised” here are climate activists who have erred under Draconian new laws: Hannah (Olivia Ferrari) has simply worn a T-shirt with the slogan “Destroy the Government” while Lou (Angel Studman) and Georgie (Angelica Gayle) have rescued paintings from Whitechapel Gallery that might have perished in the flood. The group convenes as a “counselling circle” and it is a clever format that explores how best to make a political stand but also includes interpersonal stories. It is full of subtle arguments about how a generation “demands a future” for themselves and it has a passing reference to Covid-19 too: “This generation has learned that NHS nurses can’t feed families on claps,” says a character. The last episode is set around a hiking trip and focuses on group action, combining plotlines from the first two episodes, albeit somewhat tenuously.
It is enlightening to hear young voices speak about the climate crisis, activism and how to clean up the planetary mess that the older generation has left so that they are not denied a future. The stories are engrossing, though the three parts lack a strong enough climax to their plots. Still, the dialogue makes up for it, capturing the personal and political drama of being a teenager and combining this deftly with its big themes.
• As Waters Rise is available online.
