“The Beautiful Future Is Coming” at the Bristol Old Vic - review

Flora Wilson Brown’s play, “The Beautiful Future Is Coming”, directed at the Bristol Old Vic by Nancy Medina, tackles climate grief head-on through three stories across 250 years.

The central subject of the play is climate change, and this topic is portrayed through three stories spanning two centuries. Aldo Vásquez’s set intelligently caters to this triple-timeline, blending each world into the next to indicate the pernicious quality of this multi-generational threat. It explores three stories, rotating their time on stage, and sometimes playing out simultaneously.

It is a well-realised play, important because it tackles the most important topic for our age. Across three time periods the three couples attempt to make sense of a world where climate change is dictating the future.

In 1856, Eunice Foote is the real-life female scientist who discovers the greenhouse effect but is patronised by the male scientific community. In 2027, two present-day counterparts are employees of a sustainability business, beginning a relationship just as a freak flood in London brings tragedy into their lives. In 2100, a heavily pregnant researcher is stranded at an outpost in Svalbard as she desperately attempts to cultivate wheat seeds in an impossibly hostile climate.

Eunice (played by Phoebe Thomas) is plagued by recurring nightmares and shrinks away from her family, while in 2027, Dan (Michael Salami) is driven to an extreme act of protest. Salami is a standout here, charmingly clownish one minute before rage and grief overtakes him the next.

The writing is strongest at moments in which scenes overlap and come together in unison on shared lines. These fragments have a breathless propulsion. This is both an elegant expression of what the play is exploring thematically and its most exciting theatrical language.

Medina’s production takes place in an imposing, timeless grey hall designed by Vázquez, painted with mottled skies and reflective silver blotches; with screens sliding in and out signifying time leaps. The floor, with panels separating the various scenes and time zones, and snow-esque mirrors on the walls appearing both futuristic and Victorian. Ryan Day’s precise lighting bleeding different time aesthetics together.

Wilson Brown has written a wonderful contemporary section, following Salami and Nina Singh’s work colleagues-turned-lovers, which has genuine chemistry, funny and a late turn into tragedy, but when the focus shifts to the other characters, so does the temperature and interest wanes. The chemistry between the couple is electric, and their storyline is by far the most gripping. Singh gives a particularly exceptional performance, bringing a deeply persuasive naturalism and candour to the role, and they appear to be the only couple who control their own destiny.

In the past, Eunice (Phoebe Thomas) and her discoveries were blocked by her sex – she even asks whether her husband John (played by Matt Whitchurch) will become a spokesman for her discoveries to be taken seriously while in the future, James Bradwell and Rosie Dwyer are trapped in a society created not through their own doing as they search for a crop that can grow in the almost infertile land of 2100. The relationship deepens as the play progresses. Thomas’ acting is superb, holding tightly the exasperated expression of a clever woman in a stupid system.

Whilst the play is imbued with tragedy and prompts a necessary reflection on our own climate efforts, it is conclusively hopeful. Because, aside from being about the climate emergency, this play celebrates humanity: our endless fight to create a better world, our need for love, and our ability to find joy in nature and let that joy spread through us.

However, ultimately the piece is only carried through by the skill and commitment of its cast, conceptually, there is still some way to go before the work achieves a similar level of satisfaction.

For all the compact running time with no interval and the enduring relevance of the play’s discussion of climate change it still often feels ponderous. There is a mechanical quality to some of the acting and while there’s plenty of gristle to chew on, there is somehow a lack of bone, blood and, ultimately, heart. It never feels as if we have got under the skin of these people. There is an inescapable sense of artificiality; the ideas neatly stacked up, but the humanity oddly absent.