Evaluation
Proud of their status as the Fringe’s first “no-waste venue,” BoxedIn Theatre have created their Greenhouse project to host a series of shows of environmental awareness, challenging ideas in short theatrical presentations in a makeshift rough wooden shack with benches along the walls, the floor nothing more than the grass over which it was constructed.
Not a venue built to withstand bad weather, there had been cancellations earlier in the run, and even on a pleasant day the walls shift and bulge in the wind, but that does not deter performer Georgie Turner, the example “human” restrained and interrogated by an unseen machine presence (voiced by Sarah Chamberlain) as she undergoes Evaluation.
The questions abstract, the line of questioning indirect, the subject turns them back an attempt to better understand the purpose which slowly becomes apparent as the mechanical mind, presumably alien, tries in vain to understand why a species as powerful and capable as homo sapiens is committing global suicide by actively destroying the environment in which it lives while making only futile token gestures to change behaviour.
With only thirty minutes to present the idea it is inevitable that this Evaluation will have only limited scope, but while that was sufficient for The Twilight Zone to present, develop and resolve an idea, writer/director Caelan Mitchell-Bennet is too busy beating the drum of his issues, a commendable intention and in a worthy cause but never moving past the preaching to create actual drama.
Evaluation continues at the Pleasance Pop-Up by Dynamic Earth until August 26th
