Fringe review: The Trash Garden
Clowns, the climate crisis and chaos combine in this Adam-and-Eve adaptation from the US. ★★★½
In a dystopia where “the air’s too thick to breath, the soil too dry to farm, and it’s too hot for them to fuck”, there are two people remaining on earth. Atlas (Luis Feliciano) and Evelyn (Kristen Hoffman) are a pair of clowns fumbling their way through a wacky and despair-fuelled final chapter of humankind, made extinct by the climate crisis. The dark stage is laden with trash – McCain’s pizza boxes, newspaper and Lipton iced tea bottles – the debris sticking to their legs below their black bin-bag kaftans.
This makes clear how irremovable the litter – even being used as a source of food – is from their lives. Waiting for their demise, with no online shopping, TV or alcohol left to deflect with, Atlas and Evelyn can’t escape the age-old issues: there’s something wrong with my significant other, something’s holding me back from changing my life, what is my purpose?!
Using performance as a source of meaning, Atlas and Evelyn distract themselves with elaborate games and imaginary stories. The best of which is when Evelyn gets her hands on a ouija board, with Hoffman providing an entertaining characterisation of a woman possessed. The shapeshifting ghost (Padriag Bond) that emerges helps to punctuate and give relief from Atlas and Evelyn’s neverending plight, including by breaking the fourth wall. The audience delights when the clowniness is turned up, but forming an emotional connection to the protagonists is difficult because the comedy often swoops in before sad moments can linger.
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The Trash Garden finds grounding in being underpinned by the biblical stories of Adam and Eve and Noah’s Ark. References to these well-known tales reorient viewers should they get lost in the chaotic narrative, which has some loose ends and gaps in audience understanding. While lighting was well-used for transition and mood, it could have been better employed in one fast-paced scene to clarify whether Atlas and Evelyn were playing make believe or not. However, playwright and director Padraig Bond may have intended for theatregoers to feel somewhat disoriented so they could share in Atlas and Evelyn’s state of delusion and unsettlement. Despite a lack of shape, this climate crisis tragicomedy is a timely and necessary story to reflect on right now.
The Trash Garden is at the Ballroom at Carclew from March 5–9.
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