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This tragicomedy combines voice, movement and text in a powerful performance from Marianne Tuckman that make the personal impact of the climate emergency vividly apparent.
Summary
Rating
Excellent
The climate emergency is hard to imagine as it is both intimately linked with every aspect of our lives and is also very abstract. To make it understandable Marianne Tuckman has come up with the accessible metaphor of a dirty house.
Her tragicomedy, The Dirt, at the Camden People’s Theatre, uses a stark and minimalist approach to examine this huge issue. It asks big questions about how we see the future, but it does this by shifting scale, contrasting the vastness of the whole world to that of the small in the metaphor of a home, and then down to the personal, to focus on one performer on a largely empty stage.
Through a series of monologues from different characters and scenes of movement, the anxiety and fear of the climate emergency is made apparent. At first this appears to be a quite conceptual approach, but through its 50 minute runtime The Dirt makes the psychological impact of the climate emergency tangible.
As well as addressing the weighty topic of the climate emergency, The Dirt has humour that provides tonal variety. This comes from the bizarre characters and strange situations that Tuckman enacts, such as having two characters represented by pineapples. She also lampoons the banalities of middle-class existence, referring to specific household brands, which gives the show a feeling of the particular that brings the characters to life amongst the minimalist setting.
The play has a non-narrative structure, but its use of recurring characters and themes provides anchors that make it accessible, and this is supported by humour which counterbalances the darker moments. The metaphor of the dirty house and the theme of climate emergency link the monologues and physical sequences together into a whole.
Tuckman is an excellent physical performer, with great comic timing and exceptional agility. In the scenes of movement, she is electric, conveying with a dancer’s grace the intangible nature of the looming climate crisis. Speaking as someone who is not a dance or movement expert, I found the movement scenes especially captivating, despite my lack of familiarity with the medium.
Tuckman also brings a wide range of diverse characters to life, from Baby Gustav to The Punk, giving them distinct voices and mannerisms. We only spend a small amount of time with each character in this short show, but each of Tuckman’s performances gestures to a wider life outside the walls of the theatre, making them three dimensional characters. Voice recordings, text and music are also deployed well, enhancing the mood of each monologue or movement section.
At this performance an audience member was taken ill and Tuckman had to deliver her final monologue in the lobby of the theatre, which demonstrated an exceptional commitment to the theatre maxim of ‘the show must go on’. This resulted in a powerful ending with a big round of applause.
The Dirt tackles some big and difficult issues in a way that appears opaque at first, but through character, humour and a powerful performance a simple truth is revealed: that the climate catastrophe end of the world will be a very personal event.
Text, choreography and performer: Marianne Tuckman
Creative producer: João Maio
Sound designer: Marcelo Schmittner
Lighting designer: Nicolás San Martín
Costume designer: Barte Liagaite
The Dirt plays at the Camden People’s Theatre until Thursday 26 September. Further information and details of how to book can be found here.
