Faslane

After communicating the storage location of British nuclear warheads near Faslane naval base, theatre maker Jenna Watt announces, “That’s not top secret. That’s on the MoD website.” Unfortunately, about 95% of Watt’s show on contemporary debates surrounding nonproliferation also involves a relatively academic recitation of facts.

Members of Watt’s family work at the Faslane site on the west coast of Scotland. She attempts to connect the dots between her personal tie to the base, her family’s political stance and her engagement with political activists and the wider resistance movement. She presents many sides of the nuclear case, careful to highlight any ethical or authorial dilemmas which might afflict her commentary with bias.

But theatrically, Faslane is totally lopsided. Watt spends so much time feeding us the basics that the dramatic payoff never quite rings true. Her show is bursting with essential questions, particularly regarding how the younger generation may play a pivotal role in disrupting foreign policy, either through art, direct action or a combination of the two. But there is nothing here that audiences can’t get from reading the journalist Ian Jack or listening to an interview with Noam Chomsky.

Watt is frustrated by failing to comprehend the enormity of nuclear war. But simply voicing this frustration is too cheap. Nobody can grasp the scale of the horror unless exposed to it; how else, then, can live performance interrogate this sense of the terrible unknown, the petrifying threat of annihilation? A nimbler experimentation with form might voice an initial response.