The Beautiful Future Is Coming

Stories have always been the way we share possibilities of a better world and Flora Wilson Brown’s ambitious play, The Beautiful Future is Coming, is one of those powerful stories. Tender, provocative and urgent. A heady mixture of emotions.

Spanning 250 years, it interweaves the narratives of three couples experiencing different facets of climate change. The three timelines flow into each other so we’re understanding the past, present and future together. Seeing them together brings home beautifully if tragically what impact past inaction has on us and what our inaction has on the future. It’s rare that such a juxtaposition is so vivid.

In New York, in 1852, Eunice Foote is concerned by her research into the warming properties of CO2 in the atmosphere. She was a real scientist and the first to discover the greenhouse effect, years before the man who took credit for it. At that time, her gender blinded others from taking her findings seriously enough. We see through her eyes the discrediting of scientific evidence today. Instead of past chauvinism standing in the way, this time it’s those who profit most from polluting our atmosphere.

At the same time, in London in 2027, Claire and her boyfriend are enjoying city life while contending with the impacts of heatwaves and flooding. When the extreme weather leads to tragedy that’s not acknowledged and nothing is done, we are reminded in this mirror closest to the present day that we do have a choice in our actions.

Nearly 75 years into the future, an 86-day storm rages outside as a pregnant woman called Ana is researching new farming techniques in a seedbank in Svalbard. Through seemingly fruitless yet ultimately successful seed growing trials, she fights for a brighter future for her unborn daughter. The play ends with Ana’s life-grabbing hopes, reflecting one of the playwright’s tenets, “If we allow ourselves to think there’s nothing we can do, we won’t do anything. There’s still time to act.”

Theatre and art has such power to engage us emotionally and can help us reflect on the important things that society should care about today. The show at Bristol Old Vic overlaps with the Festival of Nature, the UK’s largest free celebration of the natural world and the sustainability partners of the show. As a focus for this, a five-metre tree has been installed in the theatre foyer as the centrepiece for an audio project featuring audiences’ hopes for what a ‘beautiful future’ might look like for them.

If you can, I would recommend immersing yourself in the play and the festival. It’s a wonderful chance to reflect on the personal and the human, for each of us to consider the choices that we have and what we would like to engage with.