Wildfire Road review

Outside the theatre, Wildfire Road’s running time is billed at 58 minutes. Such almost comic precision is rather fitting for Eve Leigh’s tightly wound play. Beautifully crafted, it doesn’t waste a minute – and ends up doing more in (just under) an hour than many plays manage in twice that. 

The story is a compelling exploration of the climate catastrophe and what it might mean both for our individual lives and for the whole human race. Director Laura Keefe brings this all to life in a staging that is both wildly theatrical and seriously high-minded.

The premise borrows from the biggest-budget disaster and sci-fi movies: a plane is hijacked by a time-traveller from the future to divert it to safety out of the path of an apocalyptic wildfire spreading across the whole planet. Set entirely aboard an aeroplane initially bound for Tokyo, Leigh’s play makes such mega-concepts totally – if you’ll excuse the pun – fly in a small studio space, while also delivering touching moments of reflection and tenderness between panicking passengers and crew.

Their backstories tend towards the cute: a secret honeymoon between the pilot and her wife in economy; a man who’s always dreamed of going to Japan (isn’t it ironic, don’t you think) and the stranger he persuaded to go with him. But Leigh stays on the right side of quirky, and the whole thing is flawlessly delivered by a very funny cast, which also mines the inherent comedy of a bunch of a Brits trying to remain calm and polite in the face of such calamity (itself, surely a metaphor for our current approach to the climate crisis).
Continues...