The best thing in this show is the motorbike. Two black-clad actors crouch with wheels while two others ride – pretty dynamically – on top. The whole thing rocks, bucks and suggests speed and danger. Congratulations to whoever thought that up, whether it was director Hersh Ellis or Jasmine Ricketts who directed the movement.

Otherwise it’s hard to find anything positive to say about this overlong, laboured tale of two American teenagers, both with family issues, who run away to join a protest and change the world. As quest stories go it’s woeful: predictable and pedestrian. Half an hour in, I was gritting my teeth at the laboured, didactic dialogue (yes, we know about climate change and its implications, thanks) and the person next to me was asleep. Of course the quest is punctuated with incidents – not very exciting in this case and, once they reach their destination nothing is as expected because that’s what happens in quest stories. Meanwhile Salma Shaw keeps floating on as the moon with an illuminated ukulele in a show which simply cannot decide whether it’s based in reality or surreality.

All this mediocrity is a great pity because there’s some real talent in the cast. Richard Holt, for instance, shows a lot of charismatic versatility from a bar owner on the make to a bossy ghost dad. His coyote howls are convincing too. And some aspects of the lighting (Pablo Fernandez Baz) and projections by Elizabeth Mak find ingenious and colourful  solutions to working in a small space. I just hope they’ll all find a better show to work on very soon.

This was, I’m afraid, one of those (quite unusual) occasions when I found myself wondering for over two hours why I had volunteered to spend my evening seeing a play when I could have been at home with a good book.

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/rain-and-zoe-save-the-world/