Sydney Reviews

Air conditioning is the culprit both on and off the stage in Griffin’s production of Ang Collins’ Naturism.

A convoluted plot line about buried air conditioners destroying the environment coincides with an elevated use of air conditioning in the auditorium of the Wharf 2.

One wouldn’t think it was blasting freeze to cool the actors because none of them are wearing clothes.

A trio of tree huggers are enjoying a kind of Eden. Sid and Helen are a kind of Adam and Eve under a God-like Ray, creator of the sanctuary and author of The Thing, a Bible of Thou Shalts and Shalt Nots that bind this trinity together. Its creed is to vilify all that has happened before they arrived at this remote bush land, to live off grid, au naturel, the only allowable relic a portable device that can play a CD with nostalgic songs.

Sid remains a zealous acolyte subservient to Ray but Helen is starting to weary of the idyll. Her creativity has been stymied, relegated to the making of fugly millinery, and her temptation comes not through an apple but a magic mushroom.

Enter Evangeline, a chronically online Gen Z eco-warrior, “a naked Greta Thunberg but hot”. She wants to become a disciple to atone for her faux pas carbon footprint.

Finally, a boy named Adam gatecrashes the garden, the prodigal nephew of Ray, a brat out of hip hop hell intent on creating The Fall.

James Browne’s bush bower set is emphatically evocative and Verity Hampson’s lighting is put to great effect in the hallucinatory scenes and the impending bushfire apocalypse.

Directed by Griffin’s Artistic Director, Declan Greene, Naturism is glib about global warming, gurus and Green gospels, a gimmick with little substance, not so much an error in comedy as an incapacity.