The Last One – Arcola Theatre, London

Writer: Zoe Alker

Director: Imy Wyatt Corner

In an unnamed seaside town in the near future, 24-year-old Bess steals from the local ice cream van. While serving out her community service as an assistant in the same van, she comes to terms with her own place in the town, even as climate change threatens its very existence.

Many playwrights imagine the threat of the climate emergency through a single cataclysmic event or placing their drama in a post-apocalyptic version of the world. Here, though, writer Zoe Alker looks instead at how we have ignored, and are still ignoring, the warning signs. From there, she extrapolates what may happen if this wilful ignorance continues.

Performer Rebecca Hyde alternates between a narrator talking about Bess and her town in the third person, and as Bess herself. The transitions between personas allow for some time jumps to feel natural rather than forced while also permitting us a look at the other townsfolk through the narrator’s more dispassionate eye. At the start, Bess is brash, loud, and dismissive, keeping everybody else at arm’s length, making the contrast between her and the narrator all the more potent.

An ongoing conceit is the idea that the ice cream van is one more species facing extinction due to the increasing unpredictability of the weather. While the van’s owner, Brian, knows his trade well enough that he can take it wherever he will find the best custom, rising sea levels and coastal erosion mean that the once popular tourist trap is wasting away.

Throughout, the changes to the town are noted by its residents with increasingly inappropriate passivity. When a cliff face starts crumbling into the sea, it briefly becomes a tourist attraction – until it starts claiming houses above it. We are onlookers on our own fate, suggests Alker.

That such a message manages to be presented in an hour full of warmth, humanity, and humour makesThe Last Oneshine.

Bess comes to accept the town’s fate just as it is sealed. But maybe, just maybe, a little less passivity on our part could stave off some of the worst effects meted on this (so far fictional) town. If we continue to do nothing, losing the Mr Whippys of this world will be the least of our worries.

Continues until 27 January 2024