Atlantis review – Welsh climate crisis drama is a parable for our times

Theatr Clwyd, Mold
Emily White’s lyrical, if contrived, play is based on a real coastal village whose residents are being made climate refugees by rising sea levels

In 2014, residents of Fairbourne in Gwynedd discovered the local council had decided that maintaining sea defences was longer be tenable. Instead, as part of a process of “managed retreat”, this small coastal Welsh village would be abandoned to the sea by 2055.

This timeline has since shifted and been disputed, but while the village is not identified by name, it serves as the inspiration for Emily White’s Atlantis. Focusing on fisherman Bryn and his wife Gwen (Richard Elfyn and Vivien Parry), the action extends from 2011 to 2039, dramatising what has already occurred and imagining what is next as weather systems and a community both come undone.
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