“Maybe every generation has felt like it’s living at the end of days, but it seems particularly turbulent now, and there’s nothing quite like considering whether or not to bring another human being into the world, to make you acutely aware how very messed up the world seems right now,” says writer Duncan Macmillan.  

This is the dilemma Lungs is formed around: a couple debates whether to breed or not to breed, when the baby’s carbon footprint will only increase the burden on an earth that struggles to breathe as our gases choke it.  And the future may be so miserable that the coming generation will not forgive us. What though, if the child is the one who saves the world? 

Lara Macgregor’s brilliant initiative of the True Grit series gives us the chance to reflect on terrifying facts surely no one on earth can still ignore: the poisonous effects of our greedy lifestyles.  (Love the current joke: “What if it’s all a big hoax, and we create a better world for nothing?!”)  

But even as I smugly declare I have no children, I realise my brother’s two, with Masters degrees in science, and a passionate commitment to the planet, are miraculously part of the solution.  I may be a trifle partial but anyone can see the earth really needs them. What if my bro had made my choice? So I bring the nephew to see what he will make of Lungs, first apologising politely for the crimes of my generation.

The Fortune Studio is the perfect setting, the audience gathered close enough to the actors to see the sweat. The script directions are clear and stern: bare stage, no scenery, no props, no costume changes, no blackouts between scenes. But designer Peter King can’t help but produce a thing of beauty, and the non-set is lovely to look at.  Where overseas productions have gone for a set like a square boxing ring, King has produced a shimmering ring of light suspended above another gleaming circle on the stage floor, backed by curved mirror panels that reflect and intriguingly distort the actors, who seem to inhabit some shining abstract sculpture.

The characters are named only M and W, presumably for Man and Woman, which would seem to make them representative, but these are clearly defined and flawed individuals: W intelligent, driven and neurotic; M less sure of himself, struggling to understand W, who is freaked out – well, “fucking shocked” actually, deprived of breath – by his suggestion that they should have a baby.  For an intense and compelling 80 minutes, arguments and counter-arguments flash between them in clever, aggressive dialogue like gunfire returned, nearer the speed of thought than of speech, and exhilarating to follow. The nephew is laughing a lot, but nodding agreement too.  Undoubtedly, this slanging match is relevant as well as witty and sophisticated. 

Director Stephanie McKellar-Smith understands to a nicety how to meet the challenges of a two-hander, from the exciting pace (some of those same overseas productions ran at 105 minutes, tut tut) to the creative use of the available space.  Then there is the clever handling of the passage of time, which accelerates breath-takingly. 

Above all, there is the credible relationship established between the two.  Despite their differences, they fit, and show us what is loveable, not about themselves, but about the other, which is much harder to achieve.

As W and M, casually dressed in jeans and hoodies, Claire Dougan and Todd Emerson are exceptionally well cast and assured, plunging into their first performance with supreme confidence, convincing us of their intimacy by subtle loving touching, and by their ability to listen and talk at once.  It feels like a privilege to be part of this intensely personal conversation that goes on and compulsively on, time marked by a simple “Good night”, “Good morning”.

They make us laugh raucously as we recognise universal relationship cock-ups. They speak our own anxieties about our relationships, our lives, and our species’ very existence.  W’s last words have a terrible beauty, recalling the apocalyptic end to The Age of Stupid, with the tiny chilling news bulletin that struck home for me: “New Zealand has closed its borders to Australian refugees”.

We ache for them both, even when they irritate. And irritate they do. So self-centred! Congratulating themselves inanely on recycling plastic bags and patronising locally-owned coffee bars!  Why must they always focus on the consequences to themselves rather than on the cause?  Later, while we devour the extraordinary devastation-themed supper, the nephew remarks shrewdly, thinking of the upcoming elections, “There’s probably more chance of not living that future if we engage with these issues – we have a chance in three or four weeks, haven’t we?”

Perhaps, though, they are waiting for my generation, that did the messing, to heal it.  Don’t hold your breath.  I feel the urge to direct them to be guided by the wisdom of deeper thinkers: try www.wiseresponse.org.nz.  Its slogan* is “Mo tatou, a mo ka uri a muri ake nei”, which means, dear M and W, “For us and our children after us.”  How splendid to have commercial state-funded theatre produce a play that is funny, touching and smart, while confronting us with this, the greatest challenge of all. 
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*‘Slogan’ is from the Gaelic, ‘sluagh-ghairm’ for ‘battle-cry’. Fill your lungs now: “For our children after us – advance!”

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