Review: BURNOUT, VAULT Festival

Amara's out buying a pint of milk when she stumbles upon a protest. She's curious, but doesn't trust "All that 'save the tree' stuff". Yet, she listens to Bridgette, rapt by her chants about climate justice and the need for change. Created by ShyBairn with the help of activists, Burnout exposes activist exploitation in marginalised communities. Written by Nicole Acquah and directed by Caitlin Evans, the play is a mix of narration and dialogue with splashes of meta-theatre and quite a bit of crowd engagement.

Lekhani Chirwa (Amara) and Chloe Wade (Bridgette) are passionate and amusing in how they handle the tone of the show. They're funny and poignant when necessary, but the script is too much of a free-for-all in terms of themes. Everyone is a caricature except the two, from the posh new owner of the pub when Bridgette works to his mates who attend the meetings with a pretentious hippie flair. They tackle greenwashing and self-serving activism, class alienation within the movement and the privileged hypocrisies of climate action.

"Your Birkenstocks won't save us, even if they're second-hand," Amara says - and she's right. The criticism of groups like Extinction Rebellion might be veiled, but it's there. While their town floods again, people are glueing themselves to roads and staging protests as an ego boost while families can't put food on the table. How can you reduce fossil fuels when you already aren't turning the heating on? They have a well-meaning, exceptionally positive attitude towards the issue.

The production has a fair amount of brilliance, but, as a whole, it's erratic in the delivery of its points. The cast goes in and out of character, going as far as stopping the show altogether twice - once to get the audience involved in changing the set and another due to a fictional blackout that leads nowhere but a weird reimagined karaoke version of John Lennon's "Imagine". While interesting, they don't drive the narrative forward or add much to the outcome.

This approach has the story losing focus and looks like a plain attempt at quirkiness. Ultimately, while they mention how difficult it is to have only one hour, the piece comes off as struggling to fill those 60 minutes. All in all, the spirit of Burnout is strong and the creatives behind it have all the right ideas. Perhaps a stronger grasp on a more developed plot might help this naive call to arms.

Burnout runs at VAULT Festival until 19 March.

VAULT Festival has been left without a venue for next year. You can contribute to the #SaveVAULT campaign here.

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