F*ck the Polar Bears review – drilling into the climate debate

Bush, London
Tanya Ronder's play probes the clash between corporate career and private conscience via one conflicted family

You can't accuse the British theatre of ignoring climate change: in fact, it was Steve Waters's The Contingency Plan at the old Bush that in 2009 kicked off a spate of plays on the subject. But, much as I applaud the spirit behind Tanya Ronder's new 95-minute piece, it spends too long circling around the big issue before launching into an impassioned moral debate.

The aggressive title clearly refers to people's double standards: Gordon, Ronder's hero, is a top guy in a big energy company who frets about the loss of his daughter's toy polar bear while working on schemes that will wreck the planet's animal life. But Gordon is a bit of a mess all round. At work, he's been offered the post of chief executive with a licence from the government to pursue fracking operations. At home, however, his wife, Serena, bluntly tells him she doesn't like their life, his housepainter brother acts as a rebuke to his conscience and domestic objects mysteriously go haywire. On top of that, the Icelandic au pair turns out to be a militant conservationist.