Darwin revisited

Origin of Species
Arcola

Seize the Day
Tricycle

Oh, not again. Yup, I’m afraid so. I had no wish to return to the vexed topic of Darwinism but a much-praised show in east London tempted me out on a frosty night to the Arcola theatre.

Bryony Lavery’s new play has a storyline that’s as nutty as a Christmas cake in Broadmoor.

Molly, an archaeologist working in Africa, smuggles the skeleton of a female hominid back to her home in the Yorkshire Dales. The unearthed Neanderthal springs to life and Molly proceeds to school her in the amazing truths of evolution. The characters in this bizarre educational farce are symbolic rather than human and the show is more a dramatised lecture than a play.

In the lead role Marjorie Yates gives Molly plenty of warmth and authority, while Clare Hope-Ashitey is startlingly talented and superglamorous as the awakened Neanderthal. Sheathed in a Spandex jumpsuit, she learns English with amazing rapidity and articulates it in a sumptuous Rada accent, even though she’s been raised on the Yorkshire moors. Those hominids were more advanced than we thought.

The play’s chief purpose is to feminise Darwinism. Molly gets very cross indeed when she reads textbooks that credit ‘Man’ with discovering fire, pioneering agriculture, creating walled cities and inventing the wheel which in the fullness of time would blossom into the congestion zone. Those naughty old books should admit that women had a part in ‘Man’s’ discoveries. OK, Ms Lavery, but remember that ‘Man’ in this context is a noun of common gender taking a singular form but having a plural sense. It just means ‘humans’.

Perhaps there was no need to write a play to correct this misapprehension. But the survey of Darwinism’s chequered history discloses fascinating details.