Albatross review – Antarctic researcher finds frosty reception back home

UEA Drama Studio, Norwich
A scientist sees the climate crisis in action when she returns to her mother’s flooded home, while the mum just fancies a trip to see the penguins

In these days of ever-encroaching climate crisis, we desperately want scientists to be the heroes. Alice, a glaciologist just back from Antarctica, knows that. After all, she wants it too: “To find the answer. Invent something. Discover something. Flick a switch and solve it all.”

Playwright Martha Loader, who won last year’s George Devine award for The Town, has spent two years interviewing Antarctic researchers not just on their work, but the impact it has had on their personal lives. In Albatross, the home Alice returns to is one where her mother Eve has been caring for her five-year-old daughter. And their tense middle-of-the-night reunion – made comically awkward by the presence of Eve’s new boyfriend, Martin – allows Loader to explore the moral dilemma of what each generation owes to the next, and whether the greater good outweighs personal, even maternal, obligations.