The play opens at a village residents’ meeting arranged to allay locals’ fears over the proposed hydraulic fracturing due to be discussed at a forthcoming council session.  Andrea Hart gleamed momentarily as the supercilious and patronising model of divine-right-to-rule Lady Mayor, disappointingly never to return (save in the guise of seasoned activist, Jenny). Leaping to her feet in order to finger one of the panel as a disgracefully shameless, bribe-taking academic is Elizabeth who ends up being forcefully removed from the meeting.  The incident is filmed by one of the ‘audience’ and thanks to the internet, Elizabeth (Anne Reid) finds herself lured out of comfortable retirement from a career as a university lecturer by chance fame on YouTube and subsequent trending on Twitter.

James Bolam is her discomfited other half, Jack, whose peaceful rural retirement is upset by his wife’s unlooked for celebrity.  Doing his best to stay out of the fray he is ultimately drawn in and does some digging around on the internet, finally sniffing out enough ammunition to scupper the developers’ plans.

Harry Haddon-Paton is the potty-mouthed public relations consultant so gleefully secure in his own powers of persuasion that he allows himself to be disarmingly frank about his cynical motives and methods.  Something of a panto villain he manages some very topical throw away lines; ‘just another cyber attack’, ’talk of boy and girl jobs on the One Show’, feature in a list that includes the one that is likely to have us all reaching for the nearest heavy object to throw at the T.V. ‘strong and stable leadership’. One of the funniest moments of the evening was when he drank a bottle of water in frustrated anger.  With the hard-nosed calculation of the hired assassin this was the most vividly drawn character in the to’ing and fro’ing between the cosily beamed country cottage and the slick, modern, minimalist P.R. office.

The pro and anti arguments are laid out, with the hypocrisies of each camp given due airing.  The director of the mining company chasing the planning approval (Michael Simkins) initially comes across as genuinely concerned about ‘keeping the lights on’ and caring for the environment until a not particularly ‘green’ skeleton fortuitously tumbles out of the closet.

Tristram Wymark as local councillor, Neville, has the job of breathing life into the stereotypical model of small town political venality whilst at the other end of the political spectrum Freddie Meredith as Jenny’s New Age activist, toy boy lover, Sam, says pretty much what you’d expect of a ‘practicing pagan’ before using some digital age skills to give Jack a hand in his online research.

Anne Reid as the accidental activist has the last word, delivered as a speech direct to the audience, casting doubt over the familiar pro-fracking nostrums and having by now fully un-retired herself from public life.

Fracked!, directed by Richard Wilson, is on tour from the Chichester Festival Theatre.  It is easily digestible stuff, which last night provided plenty of laughs to keep the Theatre Royal audience chuckling along.   ★★★☆☆    Graham Wyles     16^th May 2017

Photo credit: Catherine Ashmore