Oh jellyfish of wood, please stay!
It’s unusual for a play to be upstaged by the building it’s being performed in. It’s the action and drama inside that people are there to see, not necessarily the other way round. But it feels slightly like this at the Jellyfish Theatre in Southwark which, due to its eco-guerilla architecture coolness, comes close to upstaging the play being performed within.
The official name of the Jellyfish is the Oikos Project, and it’s a ground-breaking, pop-up theatre made entirely of recycled wood – and the help of 90 volunteers. It's one of the major standing installations of the London Festival of Architecture.
Why can’t all theatre buildings be like this? The drama of the flowing jellyfish made of wood pallets and reclaimed doors, chairs and loose timber nailed together for a highly textured and layered look, is mesmerising. There's something of Noah’s Ark in this construction and it carries a similar message.
Now to the play: Oikos, pronounced "ee-kos" is written by Simon Wu, who provides the goods. It takes on the fate of our future when climate catastrophe hits. How do we react when the reality of our lives comes seeping through the door in the form of the burst banks of the River Thames?
Oikos follows Indian businessman Salil (Neil D'Souza), a city boy who's built his career to buy a beautiful house in Chiswick with river views and a mistress, to the detriment of his family who he doesn't see enough to witness their slide into dysfunction.
As the rains begin to pour, the family unravels, memories of his youth and the river Ganges steal into Salil’s urgent reality and he loses the control he’s exerted all his grown-up life.
This is a salient and pressing play, if perhaps a little too long at an hour and a half. The premise feels a little stretched, with the script suddenly pushing Salil to take a slightly puzzling turn. But D'Souza carries practically the whole play effortlessly.
Though the stage is basic, the smell of wood is comforting, and the set design works, with projections that segue into different atmospheres and scenes. The theme of the Ark is played out both inside and out and the climate change message lends itself to theatre well. We know so much about the science and facts that it’s good to see it being examined in footlights. Fundamentally, the issue is climate change but the message is ages old and universal: that we can all be quite blind to reality until it hits with ferocious force.
Just one question remains: why can’t the wooden Jellyfish theatre live on the school playground always and not be taken down in a few weeks?!
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