What is there left to say about Charles Darwin? In this year of his dual anniversary (150 years since the publication of The Origin of Species and 200 years since his birth), we have seen a glut of work discussing him and, more specifically, his work on and towards the ideas of evolution. It’s been hard to move these days without bumping into some tract on natural selection or the other. We all know the basics, the fundamentals of the ideas he imparted into the world.

Meek is clearly smart enough to have worked that out. In his play on Darwin, Collapsing Creation, he focuses very much on Darwin the man behind the world changing ideas. The Origin of Species does figure heavily as do the controversial theories (at least at the time they were) within it, but they are always portrayed or discussed in terms of their emotional impact, their human cost to Darwin.

Brilliantly, Meek does not simply dwell on Darwin and evolution to support his play, avoiding the easy downfall of making nothing more than a dry biography all plugged with up with facts and blah. It is also peppered with discussions of wider ideas. It asks questions of authorship and ethics, friendship and control, family and familiarity, faith and fact. It goes much deeper than Darwin, but never distracts from the story that is there to be told.

Meek has compressed forty years of Darwin’s life down to one day, split into four acts (Morning, Afternoon, Evening and Night). This is an interesting device and, to be honest, I am not entirely sold on it. It becomes an oddity of constantly shifting time scale. We are much reminded that eights years pass between the morning and the afternoon, but at the end a glorious and almost heart-wrenching moment turns around Darwin’s memory of the previous day and how none of this mattered to him then. There is something very interesting in the compressed, yet distended timescale, I just wish it was slightly more refined or focused.

That issue of timescale and another niggle to do with the play’s sole representation of the people who extended and expanded Darwin’s ideas (that people have extended his ideas beyond him is a key part of his story, there are very good arguments that modern evolutionary theory bears little resemblance to Darwin’s ideas beyond being a starting point) being quick to turn to fascism and eugenics aside, Meek has written a powerhouse of a script and while at times it does become a little too dense and literary for its own good. It stands easily as a great achievement and a great step forward as a writer.

The performances are uniformly excellent. Peter Hambleton shows a bruised precision and drive as Darwin, never shaking or faltering with the great weight of this play and this man and these ideas on his shoulders. Catherine Downes plays Emma, Darwin’s long suffering, devotedly Christian wife, with a poise, deportment and depth that would have been show stealingly heartbreaking if the rest of the cast were not possessed of equally superlative talent.

Christopher Brougham plays Joseph Gardiner, a composite of all forgotten little men who helped Darwin up his stepladder to brilliant, with a sharp comic edge and pleasing underlying warmth. Eddie Campbell’s turn as John Roberts, who represents the old school against which Darwin so unwillingly kicked, is a marvel of fine lines and underplayed emotions. Campbell understands that we don’t need to see someone feel something to understand them feeling it.

Rounding out the cast is Gareth Williams as Alfred Thomas, who stands in for the younger generation who took Darwin’s ideas and ran with them, who gives a brilliant performance of a cloud of big smug, big teeth and big ideas.

David O’Donnell’s direction is direct and dazzling in its simplicity. With quick drips of shadow play flitting between acts, O’Donnell understands the need to just trust the material and his unerring eye for clean but powerful staging.

Brian King’s set design straddles the modern day and the period under theatrical discussion, modern materials making up an evocative palette on which the acting occurs. Ulli Briese’s lighting is, as always, beautiful and fits the world of the play and the work like a glove.

Collapsing Creation is a good, solid piece of work. An entertaining, profoundly well-made (if somewhat overly traditional at times) production that sits nicely as an cap to the theatrical year.
_______________________________
For more production details, click on the title above. Go to Home page to see other Reviews, recent Comments and Forum postings (under Chat Back), and News. 
 

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer

"Scientific discovery is a sport" – that’s from the man who knew what was at stake when he published his radical work, The Origin of the Species.

Arthur Meek brings the bewhiskered Darwin to life in his play, showing us his funny, loving, obsessive and eccentric sides and his competitive nature. 

This is an assured piece of work from Meek who’s proving himself to be an actor and writer of remarkable talent. It’s also beautifully performed, astutely directed and deliciously set. The play needs trimming in the first half, getting bogged down in long detailed conversations. You get the impression the writer couldn’t bear to leave out the treasures he discovered during the course of his research. That aside, it’s a delight.

The play looks at the eight years before the publication of Darwin’s magnum opus, when he gets sidetracked into studying insects and almost loses the race to publish a comprehensive argument for evolution.

Peter Hambleton and Catherine Downes bring their years of experience at characterisation to their roles of Peter and Emma Darwin. Christopher Brougham hits just the right note as Darwin’s loyal servant/friend Joseph Gardiner, as does Eddie Campbell playing his argumentative colleague John Roberts.
_______________________________
For more production details, click on the title above. Go to Home page to see other Reviews, recent Comments and Forum postings (under Chat Back), and News. 

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer

Downstage’s run of successes with New Zealand work rolls on with Arthur Meek’s enthralling play about Charles Darwin, which was commissioned by the Allan Wilson Centre for Molecular Ecology and Evolution to celebrate the bicentenary of Darwin’s birth and first performed earlier this year in Nelson.

Collapsing Creation is, as David O’Donnell describes it, an intimate epic in which we observe in rich detail Darwin’s intimate life as well as the tsunami-like effect his theories had on the world, despite Darwin’s surprise that "I should have influenced to a considerable extent the beliefs of scientific men on some important points."

Like the Victorian silhouettes of the characters that are shown at times throughout the play, Meek’s drama is an outline, an impression of Darwin’s life and theories over forty years, which have been collapsed into just one day and just five characters, three of whom represent his companion, his opponents, and supporters.

But at the heart of the play is the relationship between Darwin and his wife, the extraordinary Emma, who are played by Peter Hambleton and Catherine Downes at the top of their form. Hambleton brings out not only Darwin’s simplicity and integrity and his passion for science but also what Darwin described as his "own lack of quickness of apprehension or wit."

Catherine Downes conveys the strength of Emma’s personality and religious beliefs with a stunning performance and Meek has provided her with scenes that make it quite clear Emma was the loving power behind the throne despite the threat of her husband’s theories to her deeply-held faith.

Eddie Campbell plays all of Darwin’s opponents rolled into one and Gareth Williams plays all the supporters (and distorters) rolled into one, while Christopher Brougham plays the ever-faithful assistant to Darwin – as well as providing most of the amusing comedy of which there is more than you would think. All give passionate, impressive performances.

David O’Donnell’s production with its startling opening scene, its use of music to underpin scenes, its theatricality and its ability to convey intellectual as well emotional depths is a tour de force which, of course, could not occur without Arthur Meek’s brilliant script. Bravo!
_______________________________
For more production details, click on the title above. Go to Home page to see other Reviews, recent Comments and Forum postings (under Chat Back), and News.

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer

Collapsing the essence of the Charles Darwin story into three acts in one room with five actors is a remarkable act of creation.  

Distilled into what looks like one day – morning, afternoon, evening – that in fact spans forty years, Collapsing Creation sparkles with heartfelt passion and humour as it pits scientific rigour against religious faith, personal concerns against those of all of humanity, the immediate family against the family of humankind. Its potent chemistry generates telling insights into class, gender roles, professional jealousy and profound love.

This can only have occurred through an evolutionary process of intuitive and intelligent selection. 

Playwright Arthur Meek is a formidable force of creative nature. Rather than slowly build his career as an actor of note since graduating from Toi Whakaari: NZ Drama school just three years ago, he has skill- and genre-jumped with alacrity.* This major new work blends the scholarly playfulness of a Michael Frayn (Copenhagen) with the social commentary and lucid linguistic wit of a latter-day George Bernard Shaw.

Commissioned by The Allan Wilson Centre for Molecular Ecology and Evolutionary Studies to mark the 2ooth anniversary of Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his life-changing work The Origin of Species, Meek’s Collapsing Creation is extremely pertinent right now, in a world threatened by religious intolerance and the inability of many to embrace diversity in their own communities. The core questions of human identity – where did we come from? why are we here? where are we headed? – also permeate the play.

Director David O’Donnell ensures all the actors draw their energies from the play’s vitally pumping human heart and fully engage with the passions that drive each of their actions. Any negative preconceptions you may have of dialogue-driven dramas set in Victorian drawing rooms are dispelled by a sense that this room houses the nucleus of something that radiates world-wide.

The set and lighting are intelligently designed. Brian King’s set, with one chaise longue and featuring a huge table laden with manuscripts and specimen jars – the props, created or collected by King and producer Geoff Pinfield, are superb – is backed by translucent panels that hint at walls and also serve as screens for silhouette images, staged live. Lighting designer Ulli Briese also conjures a sense of greenhouse growth beyond this hothouse of endeavour, while subtly suggesting the passing times of day.

Two excursions into the auditorium, first by Darwin then by him and the young naturalist Alfred Thomas, break the ‘fourth wall’ in an effort, presumably, to cast us as the wider world to which the story relates. The second one works better, in that it foreshadows an address to the boffins at Oxford University, but I am not sure it improves the drama to break the ‘hermetic seal’ of the play’s microcosmic view of humanity. Also, while I’m being picky, the final silhouette is not needed as, unlike the others, it trivialises an important emotional moment that goes to the heart of our capacity to love and respect those with whom we profoundly disagree. 

Peter Hambleton is at his best, infusing Charles Darwin with a huge vocational passion that transcends the limitations of his less-than-perfect health, while trying to manage the realities of a world not yet quite ready for him. The relationship between him and Catherine Downes’ Emma, his wife, is profoundly loving through fair weather and foul.

With great sensitivity Downes conveys Emma’s evolution from class-conscious mistress of a large household to a woman fully engaged with intelligent life. Her capacity to accommodate her husband’s scientific theories while maintaining her faith in a Christian God and ‘the good book’ from which she reads, and to finally include all members of the household as part of her extended family, exemplifies the play’s ‘message’ beautifully.

"I’ve collapsed many of the hobby breeders, shipmates and farmers, the ‘common men’, forgotten by history, whose insights and skills made a huge impact on the work and thinking of Darwin, into Joseph Gardiner," writes Meek in his programme note. Christopher Brougham embodies all facets of this character with growing strength as he evolves from menial assistant to valued partner in the enterprise, willing to take a stand for his status.

Eddie Campbell brings a stolid conservatism to John Roberts, Darwin’s God-fearing friend, mentor and publishing agent, loved and valued by both Emma and Charles. But when his belief in the very origin of his being is brought into question, his inability to adapt manifests the lethal truth of evolutionary theory.

Darwin’s young followers, the next generation ready and able to ride the wave caused by Darwin and ‘Gardiner’, are represented by Alfred Thomas. Gareth Williams perfectly captures his brightness, enthusiasm and socially conditioned immaturity, completing an excellent cast in an exciting production. 

Strident strings (of the Kronos Quartet, I think) open each act and their even harsher tones signify the "infernal condition" that collapses Darwin himself, from time to time. Softer tones emerge elsewhere but have yet to be well integrated into the action.

If you have any fear that this subject matter is ‘above’ you, discard them. While the scientifically-minded will revel in much of the detail, the only qualification anyone needs to find Collapsing Creating relevant, intriguing and totally compelling on many levels, is to be human.

Evolutionary scientists and ‘intelligent design’ creationists are especially encouraged to comment on this play and production.

For information on the DARWIN LECTURE SERIES, each Saturday in November, 6pm at Downstage, click on the play title above and scroll down.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Arthur Meek’s solo performance in last year’s On The Conditions and Possibilities of Helen Clark Taking Me as Her Young Lover (which he co-wrote with co-producer Geoff Pinfield) won him the Downstage Theatre Award for the Most Promising Newcomer of the Year at the Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards (where the show was also nominated for Production of the Year). The comedy music ensemble The Lonesome Buckwhips, of which he is part, was nominated for a Billy T Award. His theatre writing credits include Yolk, for Young & Hungry 08, The Cottage (2006).
_______________________________
For more production details, click on the title above. Go to Home page to see other Reviews, recent Comments and Forum postings (under Chat Back), and News. 

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer