Sprout

Overview

In an Australia of the future, familiar behaviours take on dire dimensions. Pregnant Nicole (Ashley Ricardo) is going stir-crazy, confined indoors by a climate made inhospitable through global warming. She longs for the attention of her partner, John (Fayssal Bazzi), but he's now only interested in addressing her belly, a rare source of new life and hope. Meanwhile, 16-year-old Emily (Matilda Ridgway) is trying to befriend the reluctant Tom (Sam O'Sullivan), who's keeping a cane toad he found in a box. But this animal could well be the last of its kind, and they may not have the tools to care for it. Both couples regularly tune in to hear 'the weatherman', a calmly authoritative voice who unites the country for radio broadcasts that forecast less of the future than they tell of the past.

The Pedro Collective's Sprout does not elaborate on how we got from our world to theirs and only vaguely maps its political, cultural and geographic terrain, but it's not poorer for it. Instead, it's out to chart the impact on relationships between people in the absence of certain things we take for granted — fresh fruit, living creatures, puberty — and it does so with stirring subtlety, plenty of insight and linguistic inventiveness. Young playwright Jessica Bellamy provides a particular feast for those hooked on the power of language: in her world, poetry has become a form of sanctioned remembrance; lists of extinct items, a form of poetry; and the generational equivalents of today's X and Y use different organic vernaculars. The cast put in affecting performances, and director Gin Savage has locked in the pervasive, dreamy sense of dystopia.

There's no preaching, but Sprout succeeds in leaving you with a lot to think about. Its ecological mindfulness extends to the production; the sparse set is built of recycled materials and the show's program comes on USB stick rather than paper.