Greenwash

To The Orange Tree to see the dress rehearsal of Greenwash a new political comedy by David Lewis. Recent graduate Andy Brunskill has been assistant director on the show.

I liked it very much and although the actors are still finding their feet, and at times rather overplaying the action rather than just allowing it to flow, I think it'll do well.

Set at an 'intervention' for Charlie, a former Republican presidential candidate a cast of duplicitous characters try, and spectacularly fail, to hide their political and emotional feelings leading to chaos, recrimination and panic. The lies told to seduce each other are used deftly as a parallel for the persuasions used by the Bush administration to justify a war on terror. Greenwash - the disingenious process of pretending to be environmentally friendly, when you're not - is, here, as personal as it corporate. Faux Liberals beware!

In the funniest and most moving scene Charlie, dressed in full clowns regalia and prompted by his PR guru friend Alan, uses post-9/11 rhetoric as an excuse for his own insensitivity, to coax the therapist who is meant to be helping him, out of the bathroom, where she has retreated with a gun and a suicide threat.

Although the piece is overwritten at times, which puts more onus on the actors to play fast, there is more than enough here for a really enjoyable evening of farce.