Precipice – New Diorama Theatre | Review

It’s bad enough when a show insists on timehopping between decades. This production goes to what is naturally the next level up from that, timehopping between centuries. But what is worn in the twenty-fifth century wouldn’t not be out of place in the twenty-first, and there is zero evidence of anything evolving beyond the world as we know it today. That seems to be the show’s point: in its dystopian view of ‘the future’, things will get worse, not before they get better, but before they just keep getting progressively worse, until, as one of many bizarre lyrics puts it, nobody knows how to make a sandwich anymore. It is left to the audience to assume, for instance, that’s because the ingredients to do so no longer exist. But whatever humans are left in several hundred years must get their sustenance somehow or other – and there is some indication of this in a blind taste test for ‘new’ beverages.

This musical is a collaborative effort, but it appears too many cooks spoil the broth, or whatever food it is that the descendants of survivors of some apocalypse or other like to make. In the present day, or perhaps the near future (I didn’t know at the beginning, and by the end, I didn’t care), there’s a sense of doom as the irreversible consequences of a chemical spillage by a company that Ash (Eric Stroud) works for slowly – very slowly – become evident. Anything can be a musical (there’s even a very good one called Anything Goes) but this would have been better off as a play. Any sense of urgency is obliterated, time and again, by the need for a character, or two, or all of them, to emote through song. Not the kind of high tempo song and dance numbers that go with a sense of urgency and frenetic activity either – these are tunes that wouldn’t be out of place on BBC Radio’s Love Songs with Michael Ball.

The opening scene by itself was confusing. In the twenty-fifth century, Maggie (Isabella Marshall) announces a 300-year anniversary (of what, and wouldn’t this place the futuristic scenes in this show in the twenty-fourth rather than twenty-fifth century?) and the performance of the ‘Founder’s Day Anthem’ (sung in honour of the founder of what?), before they all sing, “We’re still here, holding on” (to what? Toblerone?). Piper (Melinda Orengo) is periodically doing ‘calculations’ – if you think of Maggie as Liz Truss and Piper as the Office for Budget Responsibility, you can work out how some dramatic tension finally creeps in.

A London tower block became the base, and sole living quarters, of some kind of post-apocalyptic commune (the show is so light on detail that there aren’t so much plotholes as plot craters). Except in the twenty-whatever century, so much time has passed, and the instruments used to measure external air toxicity have long since stopped working. There’s a hint at fresh air when someone finally does open the front door – an event described rather than dramatised. But the show’s conclusion is, well, inconclusive and unsatisfying – essentially, there is no ending at all, with the show ending on a cliffhanger. I have no idea, alas, what the takeaway message is supposed to be. At best, there might be something here about the power of manipulation by a charismatic figurehead to control their followers by way of fear and a sense of (false) security, even after they have died. At worst, there’s the feeling that there are so many external factors at stake beyond our control that it’s not even worth bothering doing anything at all about climate change: we’re all buggered anyway.

There are simply too many ideas being brought to life on stage, pulling the production in various directions. At one point the audience is subjected to a history lesson on significant events that led people at the time to wonder if the world would ever be the same, stretching as far back as the fourteenth-century Black Death. While there’s some excellent actor-musicianship, none of the musical numbers were memorable. It was difficult to root for these characters, whatever century they were in: I didn’t feel I got to know much about them beyond their functions in whichever society they were in. Like a twisted set of wires connecting to various appliances, this is a show that requires some serious untangling.

Review by Chris Omaweng

Centuries apart, the residents of a towering high-rise arrive at a crossroads, taking shelter along the riverbank in Greenwich – the place where time begins and the world ends.

In the near present, a biomedical emergency drives a young couple to confront their own complicity in the face of impending catastrophe.

Four hundred years from now, those who remain celebrate their survival, while long buried truths threaten to unravel their carefully constructed way of life.

As the tides rise and the power fails, two timelines converge in a single flat, where yesterday’s mistakes become tomorrow’s reckonings.

CAST
Max Alexander-Taylor – Biscuits
Holly Freeman – Emily/Zoe
Isabella Marshall – Maggie
Melinda Orengo – Piper
Eric Stroud – Ash/Leo

CREATIVES
Creator/Director – Adam Lenson
Creator/Musical Supervisor – Annabelle Lee Revak
Creator/Music Producer – Stu Barter
Creator/Script Supervisor – Rachel Bellman
Creators – Darren Clark and Shaye Poulton Richards
Designer – Libby Todd
Lighting Designer – Ben Jacobs
Sound Designer – Mike Thacker for Orbital
Associate Director – Georgia Leanne Harris
Associate Designer – Raphaella Philcox

PRECIPICE
New Diorama Theatre
11 November to 13 December 2025