For this year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe Dogstar has teamed up with one of Sweden's leading independent theatre companies, Profilteatern , to present a new comedy Let's Inherit the Earth, by Morna Pearson, addressing perhaps our greatest existential threat outside The White House - climate change. The production opens at The Pleasance Courtyard on Friday 10 August and runs until Sunday 26 August.
Elgin born, and now Edinburgh based, Morna Pearson is one of Scotland's most original and witty playwrights and also an Artistic Associate at the Traverse. It is a busy time too for director Ben Harrison who returns to direct his fourth production for Dogstar following The Tailor of Inverness, Factor 9 and The Sky is Safe; as Co-Artistic Director of the renowned site-specific theatre company Grid Iron he will be also be directing their 2018 Fringe show South Bend. Harrison, Pearson and Swedish designer Ulla Karlsson will bring the play's anarchic world of crisis to life with songs, music and sound from Jonny Hardie and lighting by Martin Ogland.
The stellar cast includes Scottish actors Matthew Zajac, Dogstar's Artistic Director and Sarah McCardie with Sweden's Lina Hognert, Jan Karlsson and Tobias Morin. Dogstar's recent Scandinavian collaborations have included the award-winning Mungo Park - Travels in the Interior of Africa with Mungo Park Theatre of Denmark and Factor 9, which opened at Profilteatern's theatre in Sweden as part of Umea 2014 European Capital of Culture before touring in Scotland, Denmark & Wales.
Let's Inherit the Earth is Pearson's dark, funny, absurdist satire on human responses to climate change, from the arch materialists who deny it, to the preppers obsessed with getting ready for it, come hell or high water!
It's 2031. Adele has just hit number one with her new album, 43.
Somewhere in the Caribbean, three turtles are staring in disbelief and helplessness at the expanding patch of seaweed which threatens to destroy their habitat. The seaweed spreads towards luxury beach-front condominiums, owned by the super-rich Mucklefannys of the Highlands and the Storskinkas of Sweden. Their concern is the threat to the value of their properties and the quality of their cocktails.
In Moray, Jane and Grant have stocked up on weaponry, an inflatable canoe and Marmite in case of an "event". Sure enough, the North Sea floods in and the geography of northern Europe is transformed.
The forests of Sweden are on fire. Josef, Tove and their child Lukas are frantically packing as the fire approaches. Lukas asks about granny stuck upstairs. She's not really a cockroach like daddy says, is she ?
The refugees from the fire and the flood meet in the wilderness, unsure of what country they are actually in. No sign of granny.
The turtles swim for safety as the condo owners metamorphose and bake, welcoming the sea lapping at their balconies - saves them the walk to the beach. What's a turtle's favourite cocktail?
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