Oh, My Green Soap Box

Lucy Foster’s solo show is a delightful piece of theatre, mixing performance genres, whimsical comedy, audience interaction and some beautiful stage images. It’s a utopian production about the threat to the polar bear and the icecaps, an ecocritically alert piece of performed poetry that is entirely distinctive and charming.

Foster starts the audience involvement from the beginning. Her humour is zany, creeping up on you with its odd, quirky vision of the world. A surreal quality comes in the form of video images of Foster dressed in a polar bear suit approaching people in the street.

At one point, Foster ends up in bed with one of the audience members. She takes him on a miniature journey across the icecaps and the mountains. Her script is evocative and elegant, glinting with moments of tenderness and wistfulness.

This is a brave, understated performance, a wonderfully poised, multi-layered text that plants lines in the mind that linger on. Foster urges us to "give in to the proximity of another body" at one point – sex is, or could be, something beautiful in this white new world.

The piece ends with one of the simplest and most beautiful images I have seen in the theatre recently. I recall it vividly now as I write these words and know I won’t forget it for a long time.