Sneak around the back of the imposing Master Shipwright’s house in Deptford and the path will spit you out on to the very edge of the Thames. Tonight, EM Parry’s exquisite stage frames the water between rope-bound, sail-like sheets, and a tree-shrouded band whose starlike music carries gently on the breeze. This incredibly romantic setting creates a false sense of security for a story about human greed destroying the natural beauty around us.
Part of We Are Lewisham’s programme looking at the climate crisis, The Gretchen Question pulls real figures from history into a fictional web of empire, expansion and devastation. We see 18th-century Gretchen (Lauren Moakes) fall in with members of the Royal Society as they send men on catastrophic voyages of discovery. Fast forward into our near future to meet Lulit (Tamaira Hesson), a poet battling a mystery illness. Then we have Maisie (Yohanna Ephrem), an influencer live-streaming from the Arctic, where she’s been sent for a new partnership deal, showing off a mega-conglomerate’s supposedly eco-friendly work. At first it’s playful, funny, and light. Then darkness starts to seep in, and the stage takes on a kind of infection. Bodies start oozing, slime glooping, and the corpses begin to pile up.
Under the direction of Melly Still, who co-wrote the show with musician Max Barton, the stories overlap and interrupt. Drawn from the idea of radio frequency fizzing from one channel to the next, we swap between the stories with a static buzz, the cast leaping between the centuries. A few too many ideas are packed in, and some slickness is still to be found, but the staging is ambitious and inquisitive.
Combining the cosmic and the ocean-dwelling, The Gretchen Question creatively scorns our attempts to conquer both. Complementing the lighting, sound, and fantastic ensemble cast, the stakes of the story are heightened by the rustle of the trees and the blinking lights reflecting from the opposite bank of the Thames. The setting serves as fuel, a reminder of what we’re all risking, of what we should all try to save.