Juniper Blood review at Donmar Warehouse: Mike Bartlett’s climate change play lacks heat
Juniper Blood review and star rating: ★★★
Mike Bartlett‘s play Cock starring Jonathan Bailey and Taron Egerton became one of the most expensive plays in West End history in 2023 when seats went for north of £400. That play, like Unicorn, looked at changing attitudes towards sexuality, but another of Bartlett’s recurrent themes is climate change, a topic he tackled in his frenetic, experimental piece Earthquakes in London. New play Juniper Blood looks at two differing perspectives on global warming: the people who think capitalism is our only lifeline to a healthier planet, and the tree-hugging eco-warriors.
There are shades of Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem in Juniper Blood, which presents a version of Britishness that is both quaint and completely stifling. A grassy mound engulfs the stage, where a group is relaxing together. There are echoes of Beckett’s Happy Days; white light, representing the sun, is beaming down and the house lights are up. There’s nowhere to escape the burn.
Ruth is hanging out at her husband Lip’s farm when Femi and Milly, her stepdaughter and best friend, show up. The group get to talking, and disagree over the most ethical ways to live, sparring over topics like whether or not organic farming is actually better for the planet than using moderate pesticides. There’s comic relief from horny neighbour Tony who’s following a punishing gym routine in his fifties to find a new lease of life.
Juniper Blood: Bartlett’s writing is characteristically funny
Bartlett’s writing, as it always has been, is often funny, though too much of the script feels didactic. The talk about tech solutions to climate problems, and idealism versus pragmatism, starts to feel a little too on-the-nose and gets a bit dreary.
Directed by James Macdonald, who collaborated with Bartlett on Unicorn, Juniper Blood starts generating heat in the third act, even if by then the plot starts to feel somewhat contrived. I think the central issue is with Lip, the die-hard climate warrior, whose character isn’t fleshed-out enough. He’s furious with anyone who is sympathetic to anything that isn’t living a self-sufficient life in a forest, and risks his marriage and his daughter to decamp to the woods. Sam Troughton does a fine job with the role, but there isn’t enough about his motives or his character and so he ends up seeming more like a bit of a weirdo than someone morally upstanding, which feels a bit reductive. You just can’t get a feel on who this guy is.
Jonathan Slinger’s Tony feels more nuanced as a vulnerable open wound of a man whose story line about finding a second wind in life has some interesting ideas about finding hope in disastrous circumstances.
Juniper Blood plays at the Donmar Warehouse until 4 October