Regardless of whether one believes in it or not, climate change is undoubtedly a hot topic, and British playwright Richard Bean has clearly done his homework on the subject. While The Heretic could easily be a vehicle for playwright pontification, there is nothing terribly dogmatic in Bean’s writing, nor is the character of Dr. Diane Cassell by any means elevated to anything other than scientist, lecturer, and mother.

Jennifer Ward-Lealand is appropriately cast as said doctor, with a drive that is factored by technicality rather than emotion. As Professor Kevin Maloney, Stelios Yiakmis balances the right amount of respect, frustration, and love for Diane, but holds back, especially vocally, when the gloves come off. His nonchalant asides are brilliantly timed, especially in the second act. [More]

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British playwright Richard Bean brings razor-sharp wit and an amusing sense of the absurd to this high-spirited romp through the fractious terrain of climate change science. 

As in his sensational adaptation of the commedia classic The Servant of Two Masters, the skilfully structured plot has scintillating dialogue neatly combined with poignant personal drama and riotous farce. 

The impact of the satire is somewhat blunted by a crude dualism in which climate change activists are dishonest, self-serving and incompetent while the sceptical heretic never wavers in her devotion to the exalted realm of pure science. [More]

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Everyone knows that climate change is a fact: the sea levels are rising and CO2 emissions are to blame. But what if everyone is wrong? What if all the evidence is wrong? This is the question that award-winning British writer Richard Bean poses in The Heretic.

At the heart of the piece is Dr Diane Cassell (an excellent Jennifer Ward-Lealand), a feisty, rigorously scientific mind who can’t afford to ‘believe’ in anything but must challenge and test every hypothesis. Her speciality, measuring the sea levels in the Maldives, leads her to conclude that they have not risen in 20 years. As expected, this scepticism is frowned on by her colleagues and her line manager Kevin (Stelios Yiakmis). Naturally this leads to various complications.

Things are further complicated by Dr Cassell’s tussles with her anorexic Greenpeace-activist daughter Phoebe (a fierce and prickly Jess Holly Bates) and her clever but unstable student Ben (Jordan Mooney), who’s strict beliefs on saving the planet mean he only eats locally grown vegetables with lashings of garlic to ward off the resulting methane gasses he ‘emits’. 

Bean’s play is rather unrelenting in its portrayal of the youthful generation as passionate, but largely emotion-driven activists. Not to mention the scorn with which he views the figure-bending and money-driven scientists that surround Dr Cassell. Only she, as the pure voice of reason can be the clear hero of the piece.  

Bean’s own notes on the play say that he is not attacking the validity of climate change, so much as the shoddy scientific thought on the matter. But it’s hard to separate the playwright’s personal thoughts (for him the jury’s still out) from the piece.

Overall, it’s a slick production. The cast nail their Yorkshire accents and bring the scientific jargon skilfully to life. The banter whips and cracks; the doses of humour and the well-spun web of relationships make the piece eminently watchable. Special mention to Jordan Mooney’s touching love song.

It’s excellent to go to the theatre to have your beliefs challenged, and to remember that fear-mongering and shocking statistics are weapons for politicians not scientists, but it would be foolish to reduce this play to a mere scientific debate. Bean also reminds us that human beings are complicated, emotionally messy creatures. No matter what rigour Dr Cassell can apply to her science and research, she cannot help herself wanting, when it comes down to it, only to save her daughter above all others.  

A thought-provoking and stylish show.

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