Our uncomfortably hot summer could be our coolest...
Emily White’s new play Atlantis comes to Chichester’s Minerva Theatre (until Saturday, August 15) on the back of a hugely positive response to its opening month at Theatr Clwyd.
Alfie Llewellyn, who is playing Phillip, said: “The month was amazing. The audience grew and grew every night, just like it does in Chichester. Up at Theatr Clwyd, there is the same like religious tribe of theatre-goers that come once the word gets out. There was one couple that came to see the play 13 times in one month! I think the thing is just that theatre is temporary, and if you are captured by the characters that you're seeing, you just want to keep coming back and seeing them because you know that they are there just for a limited time and you know that it can be different. And you know with this play that you'll think different things about it.”
In the play, in a small coastal village in Wales, Bryn and Gwen learn they will be forced to abandon their cherished home in the face of rising seawater. Their crisis rekindles Gwen’s crusading spirit, cradled at the Greenham Common protests in the 1980s – a commitment inherited by her granddaughter Rhiannon. But as the years pass, their passionate activism threatens to divide mother from daughter, sister from brother, husband from wife.
“What I love about this play is that everyone is a protagonist,” Alfie says. “You've got the bad guy or the good guy but it really depends where your own views are as to who they are. It depends what you think who the good guy is and who the bad guy is. My family came to see it twice and the first time they really disagreed with something but the second time they really understood it and were reflecting differently on my own character. There is no right and there's no wrong. There are beautiful scenes where two characters are having a heated argument but both of them are right! It was beautiful in rehearsals breaking down the scenes. It was a lot easier because you don't have to find ways that these characters have these ridiculous points of view because every character is speaking the truth of their own position.
“Climate change is one of the topics in the play but it is not shovelling it down your throat. It is not telling you what to do. It is just talking about it, and if you listen, you're going to feel quite conflicted.”
As Alfie says, it is significant that the play comes during this summer of all summers, this summer that feels so uncomfortably hot but which, who knows, might just be the coolest summer we're going to get for quite some time.
“This is a play that's going to make you think about that.
“I am playing Phillip who is a bubbly light-hearted wide-eyed person but a very family-orientated person. He is very much there for his family and he tries to put them first. But he has never been asked the question about what he would like to grow up to be because in this family there is a feeling that there might not be a world for you to grow up into. And I think he does grow up with some regrets about not having been asked that…”