Walden, starring Gemma Arterton, is certainly not uninteresting but it’s all talk and lacks the fiery whoosh of full dramatic lift-off

Walden

Harold Pinter Theatre, London                                Until June 12, 1hr 45mins

Rating:

Walden is a thumbs up for our theatres tentatively re-opening, a thumbs down for our planet. We are all doomed! The pandemic is a doddle compared to the meltdown evoked in this new play, set in the not-so-distant future.

The Earth’s climate has hit PONR (point of no return). Temperatures are soaring, a tsunami has left a million dead, refugees swarm, nukes are ready to launch. The play stars Gemma Arterton, a good actress swathed in former Bond girl glamour. 

She plays Stella, who has quit Nasa and now lives with her environmentalist fiance (Fehinti Balogun) in a cabin in the woods.

Temperatures are soaring, a tsunami has left a million dead, refugees swarm. The play stars Gemma Arterton (above), a good actress swathed in former Bond girl glamour

Temperatures are soaring, a tsunami has left a million dead, refugees swarm. The play stars Gemma Arterton (above), a good actress swathed in former Bond girl glamour

The shack is inviting – tarry timbers, off-grid, with homebrew and breathable mountain air. But the couple’s low-carbon seclusion is about to be upended by the arrival of Stella’s twin sister Cassie, who has returned from a year on the Moon, growing veg in a space colonisation programme. 

The estranged siblings both float in a grieving orbit around the void of their dead dad.

Prickly and rather prissy, Arterton’s Stella reminded me a tad of fusspot Thelma from The Likely Lads. Her more go-ahead sister (the excellent Lydia Wilson) gets all twinkly with Stella’s huggable fiance. 

Unlike Cassie, he thinks we should fix Earth before we go littering up Mars.

American newcomer Amy Berryman’s play takes an old device – the sibling reunion – and loads it up with a vision of grim things around the corner. How ironic that the astro-boffin eco-idealists should elect to live in the backwoods, killing deer and drinking beer, just like Trump supporters.

As a story of imminent ecocide it’s certainly not uninteresting but it’s all talk and lacks the fiery whoosh of full dramatic lift-off.