Walden by Amy Berryman is currently being presented by Icarus Theatre at The Theatre Centre. It’s set in the United States in a not too distant future where the impacts of climate change have become acute. Summer temperatures in New England push 50C and millions die in tsunamis but social cohesion (such as it is in the USA!) seems largely unaffected. Back to the Earthers flourish unhindered in the mountains but NASA is still funded to the point where it can send manned missions to the Moon or Mars.

In the play Cassie; an astronaut just returned from a year on the Moon visits her identical twin sister Stella, who is living with Bryan; a rugged Earth Advocate in a surprisingly comfortable home in the mountains despite antiquated plumbing and a dodgy generator. Life is normal to the extent one can apparently still buy a bottle of Beaune in the nearby town (though what temperatures must be lie at harvest time in Burgundy I can’t imagine).

It turns out that the girls’ father was a famous astronaut and both of them seem to have been presented at the altar of NASA at an early age (shades of Hannibal Barca here!). Cassie passed astronaut school but Stella did not. She became responsible for designing habitats for colonization missions. At this point she has left NASA and, to some extent, signed u to the EA (Earth Advocate) view that the money spent on space missions would be better spent on ameliorating conditions on Earth. Cassie is to lead a settlement mission to Mars and she wants Stella to return to NASA as part of the project. This leads to a series of conversations about what, under prevailing conditions, a “good life” is and to what extent one trades off duty and self actualization.

This is done with a pretty light touch. All three characters come off as fully human rather than cardboard cutouts. They all have baggage and are fighting their respective demons. Tragedy has touched everyone. If Bryan and Cassie are pretty secure in their beliefs, Cassie is deeply conflicted. There’s more than enough skilfully crafted material to keep one engaged for ninety minutes or so. It’s crisply directed by Erik Richards and there are excellent performances from Oshen Aoun as Bryan, Emily Anne Corcoran as Stella and, especially, Charlotte Dennis as Cassie.

There’s nothing revolutionary about Walden. It’s a series of conversations. It works better as a vehicle for exploring Thoreau’s ideas about a “good life” than as a serious discussion of climate change, its implications and our options. Indeed, the world building is rather weak. Go see it for the human element not the science or sociology.

Walden runs at The Theatre Centre until September 26th.

Photo credit: Sandro Pehar