This Little Earth. Arcola Theatre.

Honey pushes her boyfriend, Christopher, over the edge of a frozen crevasse in Antarctica. Unfortunately, Christopher grabs hold of her, and now both of them are trapped at the bottom of a ravine 15 metres below the surface, without water, food, or a means to keep warm. Jessica Norman’s debut play, This Little Earth, explores how the duo come to be there and takes a detour into fourth-wall-breaking magical realism to tell us what happens next. “I’m going to starve to death, unless hypothermia gets me first,” moans Christopher. “Are there worse ways of dying than freezing to death in the pursuit of truth?” Honey asks. Probably there are, but there are better ways, too — why risk ending up with this one?

Honey (Fanta Barrie, so good in the recent revival of The Ministry of Lesbian Affairs) is grieving her sister, Sadie, who died unnecessarily and in pain after buying into a conspiracy theory about ‘poisonous’ cancer drugs and malevolent doctors. One would suppose the woman might have learnt to eschew the attractions of disinformation, but her sorrow has transmuted into anger. She wants somebody to blame and to believe that Sadie’s demise was not meaningless and random —that “something is deeply wrong with the world” and someone must be in charge.

A seemingly happenstance encounter in a Weatherspoon’s with the nerdy Christopher (Ross O’Donnellan combines tin-foil-hat obsessiveness with something darker and more malign) leads to a picnic and a visit to the lad’s flat. Pride of possession on his wall is a flat model of the Earth. Antarctica goes all the way round, edged by a massive ice wall. “The Truman Show is practically a documentary”, Christopher, who is grieving the absence of his young daughter, confides to the bemused woman.

Honey makes a hasty beeline for the door, but then starts her own journey into an internet rabbit hole populated by flat-earthers. Soon, with the conviction of the newly converted, she demands that the duo visit Antarctica to find the truth about the ice wall and bring it back to the world. They take a flight to Chile (presumably not noticing the time zone difference), a cruise ship to the frozen south, and steal a boat. What could go wrong?

Twists and turns follow. Lies, big and small, are revealed. Christopher, whose faith turns out to be less all-encompassing than Honey’s, is not quite the man he first appears to be. The revelations are deftly handled, though the suspension of disbelief required to buy into Honey’s journey from sensible IT Consultant to full-on bonkers is hefty indeed. The challenge with putting your characters in a near-impossible situation is getting them out. Norman’s solution, more a cop-out than a resolution, involves talking penguins, the house lights coming up, and an ambiguous dream-like flight into a cosmic alternative reality (neatly brought to life through projections from Hugo Dodsworth).  Cat Fuller’s set evokes the steely blue of an icy cavern that may end up as the couple’s grave. Jamie Lu’s excellent sound delivers the muffled, mechanical subterranean feel of ice grinding against ice.

Norman’s point in This Little Earth seems to be that, like revolutions, conspiracy theories ultimately ‘eat their children’.  Irrational, unstable, ever more tenuous logic devours everything, including the believers themselves. It is an interesting theme that never feels as fully explored as it might. It is one thing to acknowledge that the truth is what you believe it to be. It is quite another to account for why these characters become so smitten with faith in this particular version of the world. This Little Earth does not quite pull it off. Still, there are laughs and much else to enjoy here, sustained by director Imy Wyatt Corner’s consistent momentum — a solid debut work.

Writer:  Jessica Norman

Director:  Imy Wyatt Corner