Gareth's Culture and Travel Blog

Sometimes when the consensus of reviews is negative, it demotivates you from going to / booking for a play. I tend not to be deterred from going to something already booked, though I am disinclined to book something I haven’t yet. Which makes me happy I had booked for this because I thought it was a lot better than the reviews led me to believe. It has its flaws, but I was very glad I went.

The term ‘kitchen sink drama’ was coined for those quintessentially British gritty working class plays like Look Back in Anger (at this very theatre). I will reappropriate it for this, in the sense that Al Smith throws in everything including the kitchen sink. Geo-political issues, climate change green washing & the environment, colonialism & neo-colonialism, corruption, corporate governance and ethics – business, medical, research, political, educational. Even the NHS and Brexit are here. In truth it is somewhat overloaded with issues.

The play revolves around a battle for rare mineral resources between an American tycoon (a thinly veiled Elon Musk character) and a British medical researcher in the salt flats of Bolivia. They both want lithium and this is apparently the world’s biggest source, seemingly controlled by one indigenous man. When the politicians get to hear of the battle, they become the fourth party, their interest moving from protecting their country and their people to getting elected. As the story unfolds, they all prove to be masters of manipulation, even the solitary indigenous man. No-one comes out of this well, which is part of its point.

It’s full of implausibility, exaggeration, inaccuracies and some dubious science, and at just over three hours it is too long, but it’s a vehicle for an interesting debate about ethics in many different situations and it engaged and stimulated me such that I didn’t feel its length. There are some very clever lines and touches, like a female politician’s hairstyle changing to the plaits favoured by indigenous women as she embarks on her campaign for election, and some very funny moments, mostly involving tycoon Henry Finn, many from the mistranslation of English into Spanish and vice versa.

There’s no weak link in the excellent cast of nine, four of whom double up to give us thirteen well drawn characters. Director Hamish Pirie needed to reign in things a bit, but I enjoyed the evening nonetheless. Don’t be a sheep, decide for yourself.