Wormwood

A bleak and hard-hitting play by Scottish writer Catherine Czerkawska, Wormwood looks at the Chernobyl tragedy from an entirely human perspective, questioning the public perception that the disaster was a cautionary tale against nuclear power. In fact, it argues, the catastrophe was brought about entirely by the naivety and thoughtlessness of man.
The characters in this play all represent conflicting views surrounding the new nuclear power station. Natalia and her fiancé Viktor (Heidi Goldsmith & Renwick McAslan) are both scientists, idealistic and convinced of the plant’s safety. Natalia’s sister (Catherine White) is longing to leave this utopia because it is giving her nightmares, while her fire-fighter husband Stefan (Chris Harvey) has nothing but cynicism regarding the plant’s safety.
Through the mysterious and symbolic Artemis (Virginia Gray), the story of the days of the tragedy unfolds and envelops all the protagonists. They walk through the now-abandoned streets, in flash-back or in conversation with Artemis, as she teases out the dramatic and tense climax to the first half of the play. A hard act to follow, the second act lacks tension, but instead shows the characters slowly succumb to the fall-out and focuses on the other human factors that made this such a disaster.
It appears at times that the actors mute the sheer awfulness of the tragedy for dramatic effect; for instance, during the night after the plant has caught fire Tanya tells her son Anton (Maddie Rex) that he should sleep with the window open – and thus he is inevitably exposed to the radioactive material. The dramatic irony makes the play all the more heavy-going for the audience, but all is handled with subtlety and dignity. This prevents the show from wallowing in pathos, and allows the story to be told so that the audience can think instead of suffering too.
The play concludes with bleakness and scant optimism; nothing is offered as a way of fully comprehending how a series of human errors led to such unnatural and widespread suffering. The production achieves its aims, and showcases what happened, and why it did.