FringeReview UK 2023
Talking About the Fire
Royal Court Theatre with China Plate and Staatstheater Mainz
Genre: Chat Show, Contemporary, Debate, Interactive, Live Music, Mainstream Theatre, Multimedia, New Writing, One Person Show, Short Plays, Stand-Up, Talk, Theatre
Venue: Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Upstairs
Festival: FringeReview UK
Low Down
Custard cream or organic? You’ll find a choice of either – despite the winner of a quiz on the number of nuclear powers there are in the world taking a complete pack (It’s nine; I thought eight). They don’t for long, are asked to share. Which is what this is about. Only don’t normalise custard creams with Armageddon.
Chris Thorpe’s Talking About the Fire written and performed by him and directed by Claire O’Reilly at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs (till December 16th) is like nothing else on theatre earth: yet is about how we can lose it all. Naturally it’s riveting and provokes laughter.
This is breakthrough theatre in more ways than theatre
Written by and performed by Chris Thorpe, Directed by Claire O’Reilly, Designed by Eleanor Field, Lighting Design Arnim Friess
Production Manager Bob Athorn, Script Development Rachel Chavkin
Till December 16th
Review
Custard cream or organic? You’ll find a choice of either – despite the winner of a quiz on the number of nuclear powers there are in the world taking a complete pack (It’s nine; I thought eight). They don’t for long, are asked to share. Which is what this is about. Only don’t normalise custard creams with Armageddon.
Chris Thorpe’s Talking About the Fire written and performed by him and directed by Claire O’Reilly at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs (till December 16th) is like nothing else on theatre earth: yet is about how we can lose it all. Naturally it’s riveting and provokes laughter.
More than that, it’s brilliantly constructed throughout its 90 minutes, with Thorpe standing on a Persian rug with table, laptop screen with a keyboard opposite. He memorises audience names with what they’ve said and brings these back with a masterful coup. Thorpe makes the political not so much personal as makes you wince.
I missed Thorpe’s previous shows Status (2018), built around Brexit and national identity, and Confirmation (2014), addressing confirmation bias and genuinely engaging with a white supremacist and holocaust denier. Luckily there’s five-minute clips on a British Council YouTube. I hope Talking About the Fire joins them.
Thorpe meets Veronique Christory in a posh bar, who tells him she loves a previous show. Turns out she’s senior arms advisor to the UN. Soon she’s prompted him to his next.
Christory has engineered the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, where many non-nuclear nations have signed a treaty: not to possess nuclear weapons or allow protection from a nuclear power. I asked: there’s 93 of the 196 world nations (we were asked to guess that). The easy half, as Thorpe explains.
Next come nations who may yet be persuaded given current conflicts. But naturally nuclear powers scorn the notion. Nevertheless, as Thorpe points out, there’s no receding danger, but an ever-increasing one. He models up-to-date scenarios. One involves ageing malfunctioning computers guiding bombs.
Thorpe’s constructed this in a classic intro, ABA and coda. We’re introduced through a warm-up, gathering audience names, what they’re doing here, then a burst of screechy-mic as Arnim Friess’s lights dim to a halo: Thorpe suddenly declaims clips of poetic rhetoric through the show, and indeed plays three times on a keyboard threading new information into a song. I could have done with more of that. Thorpe’s rapt recitation marks a different theatricality, but this isn’t that show.
Where do “boneless children” come in to it, at the beginning? There’s proleptic hints till we enter the discussion proper, then a shift as Thorpe asks us again about our lives, musical preferences, all referenced on a laptop and projection. Thorpe’s ability to later string these into a narrative every night is prodigious. Though we’re clearly manipulated at the outset, there’s nothing condescending: Thorpe invites us to help construct his projected reality.
Displaying the Beirut explosion of 2022, Thorpe analyses its force, explains how through google-Nukemap how that’s multiplied through Hiroshima (via World Trampolining Record footage) into how a B61 small-medium nuclear bomb, like those at Lakenheath 100 miles away (yes, Greenham has quietly come back), would effect the area around the Royal Court. We won’t dwell on the B83.
Curiously this audience thought the estimate too low. Thorpe confesses the modeller of the google-Nuke erred on the conservative. After accepting this, Thorpe ups the bomb type. Thorpe makes himself a cup of tea; the kettle’s ominously steaming. You’re looking for metaphors everywhere by now. There’s other discussions to be had (MAD, anti-proliferation, all currently on the back nuke burner so to speak), but this argument follows Christory and the 93 signatories.
What you don’t expect is the coup Thorpe pulls at the end. To say live is enough. This is breakthrough theatre in more ways than theatre. Naturally, the Royal Court mounting what in effect are two Fringe shows back-to-back (Bulllring Techno Makeout Jamz follows) could infuriate purists. Who might prefer a so-so new drama. Yes, but both shows sizzle; and frankly this being Artistic Director Vicky Featherstone’s last show, it goes out with a bang eternally suspended. That is new.
