20 July 2017
Thank you for your patience
The Hackney Showroom
reviewed by Adam McCormack
Star rating: ****
Have we become too blasé about nuclear waste? The seventies and eighties saw continual impassioned protests from students, but of late there has been a silence. The issues have not gone away – it will still be 100,000 years before the waste is safe and this new piece of performance art, by Hector Dyer and Rob Morton, perfectly encapsulates the tacit conspiracy to overlook a portentous legacy.
Partly a polemic narrative, interspersed with rap-like prose of a dystopian future, where ill-informed future generations uncover the toxic residue of our indulgence, this production is both powerful and thought provoking. By illustrating the short memory surrounding the disposal of chemical waste in a Bristol field, and then describing the mechanics of the deep disposal of nuclear waste in Finland we are left with a feeling of an inevitable apocalyptic scenario. Once buried, how do you keep mankind informed as to its whereabouts and significance for 100 millennia? Dyer’s impassioned and mesmerizing one-man delivery is perfectly complimented by Morton’s pulsating soundscape, and the sparse set facilitates an intimate and, under Georgie Staight’s direction, perfectly paced experience.
The show in Hackney follows an opening in Paris, and there are two further performances, on 26th and 27th July. This is one that our children should see.
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