Juniper Blood and some portraits
This latest play at the Donmar is a funny family drama but it is also full of knotty debates about how to live well. Juniper Blood by Mike Bartlett opens on a family farm that needs renovating; Ruth (Hattie Morahan) and Lip (Sam Troughton) have just inherited and are full of ideas of how to be more sustainable. With definite Chekovian undertones with the family farm under pressure and fraught family relationships I thought that might be where this goes, but alongside the entertaining family dramas this turns into a energetic and gripping debate about what is a good and ethical way to live in a capitalist world gone bad. Throw science at it or carry on regardless, make pragmatic changes around organic and sustainability, or go full survivalist and return to basics? The characters represent and advocate the different approaches. Ruth is full of middle class guilt and compromise, so advocates organic farming and a few pigs, whilst Millie (Nadia Par...