Earthquakes in London

University of Winchester BA Acting programme
Earthquakes in London
By Mike Bartlett

Final Year BA Acting students take on Bartlett's epic play, first staged in 2010 at the National Theatre.

Driven by an all-pervasive fear of the future and a guilty pleasure in the excesses of the present, the play takes us on a journey from 1968 to 2525 and back again.

Described as a 'fast and furious metropolitan crash of people, scenes and decades,' it moves deftly between the personal and political as we encounter three sisters trying to navigate their ‘lives and loves as their dysfunctional father, a brilliant scientist, predicts global catastrophe’.* The form juxtaposes naturalist dialogue with dream-like visions, on a journey through chaos that leaves us with uncertainty and hope…

Whilst it's, perhaps, impossible for the form of a play to adequately capture the scale and urgency of climate change, Bartlett's work offers an ambitious and adrenaline-fuelled theatrical ride that opens up a range of urgent contemporary issues. Given it's forward-looking time line to 2525, the play is perhaps, even more resonant now than when it first appeared in 2010.

*Earthquakes, 2021 edition.