Chris Thorpe. Photo by Andreas J Etter.

A Family Business by Chris Thorpe – Omnibus Theatre, London

The Anthropocene Era, the Age of Humans when the future of the planet is geologically determined by the actions of our species, is now widely agreed to have begun at 05:29:21 on July 16, 1945, with detonation of the first atomic bomb at Alamagordo, New Mexico. Since the dawn of the nuclear era, nothing has been the same, bombs have increased in power and number. There are now around 13,000 nuclear warheads in existence, belonging to the world’s nine nuclear states, and most have the explosive power of 100 Hiroshima bombs. The nuclear threat is constant, and the consequences of any one of these bombs ever being used are dire for humanity. Can we really live indefinitely with the dull, constant background threat of annihilation?

Chris Thorpe’s new show, A Family Business, developed with Rachel Chavkin and produced by China Plate with Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, opens up discussion about a subject most prefer to not even think about. Using his trademark conversational approach, Thorpe draws the audience into his own journey of discovery which began after meeting a woman working for International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. Awarded the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize, ICAN has successfully campaigned to ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. As a result of their actions, a coalition of countries from the Global South has united to deliver an international agreement that makes nuclear weapons illegal. The downside: no nuclear state has signed up.

By focusing on current, and in many ways successful, anti-nuclear action, Thorpe centres his piece on hope for change. His narrative sections are woven together with a dramatisation of the negotiations – bribery, threats, and coded discussions about nations that take place behind the scenes of international agreements. Three performers, Andrea Quirbach as the lead ICAN negotiator, Greg Barnett as the representative of a US-style power, and Efé Agwele from an African nation, talk behind the scenes. From a personal perspective, none supports the existence of nuclear weapons, but as diplomats their views are neither here nor there. They play the game that keeps the nuclear status quo intact, as though humanity were not ultimately a single family.

It is a good thing Thorpe has identified hope about the despair, because the show pulls no punches on the consequences and probability – certainty even – that nuclear war will one day take place, through accident or design. Thorpe draws the audience into cheerful conversation that reveals our general lack of knowledge about the greatest threat to our existence. He uses a web simulator to show how little of our world would remain if anyone ever pressed the button. A Family Business is engagingly performed, and directed by Claire O’Reilly, under a swag of cables designed by Eleanor Field. The show would benefit from editing in places, as the diplomatic drama has a tendency to drift. However, Quirbach, Agwele and Barnett all give nuanced, believable performances as ordinary people grappling with astonishingly high stakes. But, as Thorpe points out, the only places anything ever changes is in rooms of ordinary people, talking. His show is urgent theatre, engaging with something so big that no-one knows where to start. By bringing this discussion to the stage, he makes a powerful case for looking the threat in the face, rather than hiding our heads in the sand.