By Richard Bean,
Melbourne Theatre Company
MTC Sumner Theatre, until June 23, 2012
MTC Sumner Theatre, until June 23, 2012
Reviewer: Kate
Herbert on May 17, 2012
Stars:****
“I’m a scientist. I
don’t believe in anything,” quips Noni Hazlehurst as Dr. Diane Cassell, the
controversial, English climate change and sea level expert in Richard Bean’s
witty, intellectually challenging play, The Heretic.
Diane is the heretic
whose research findings contradict the quasi-religious doctrines about Climate
Change in Professor Kevin Maloney’s (Andrew McFarlane) university faculty.
In Bean’s
irreverent, often hilarious play, the politics of science, the idiocy of
academia, and the chaos of family life collide in a quirky version of a family
drama.
Hazlehurst, as Diane, is a refreshingly still point amidst frantic characters, as she wrangles her explosively dysfunctional, intellectually gifted daughter, Phoebe (Anna Samson), her obsessive, Greenie student, Ben (Shaun Goss), and her ambitious colleague and ex-lover, Kevin.
We forgive Diane her
academic arrogance and avoidance of emotional engagement, because she is so
damned clever and entertaining.
Bean’s writing is
impudent, satirising all players in the climate change debate, from academics
who manipulate data for funding, Greenies seeking a zero carbon footprint,
politicians demanding certainty, and hippy-fascist, eco-terrorists who threaten
anyone who disagrees with them.
Director, Matt
Scholten, and his capable cast keep the arguments clear, the comedy swift, and
the characters heightened and engaging.
The ideas stimulate
plenty of post-show discussion and the dialogue is often uproarious, although
sometimes didactic and dense with scientific fact.
Bean’s narrative is
clever, impertinent and keeps us thinking, although its final scenes slip into
some Keystone Cops antics and it ends a little too neatly without resolving
issues around Diane’s academic reputation.
By Kate Herbert
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