Single Use ★★★★

There’s every reason to applaud the determination of Verity Mullan‘s one woman show. Her character, Ella, is a millennial, plagued and tormented by the temptations and pressures of modern life and is seemingly unaware of the knock-on effects of the current life style trends, until she receives a mysterious phone call from Malaysia, from someone complaining that she has wantonly dumped her plastic rubbish in their home.

Ella has burst into the intimate space, which is Bunker 3 at The Pleasance, laden with a bin bag filled mostly with containers from her nightly deliveroo addiction. She flat-shares with Abby who is making ever more insistent demands for rent and so is largely avoided. Ella claims to work for a design company in town but this transpires in reality to be a bar that she works at which has to reinvent itself regularly – with the help of themed inflatable props. It is clearly ailing – as is the manager of the bar who hasn’t really known success since he once played a semi-romantic lead in a dated musical in the 80s.

There is a host of other characters which enable the story to be fully fleshed out but at its core, is a strong message which increasingly haunts Ella’s thoughts – and that is that she and her generation are responsible for the steady decline of the planet’s health, largely due to the relentless abandonment of plastic. This message is strongly conveyed and it is a compelling watch as Ella tries to reject her former lifestyle, tries to recycle effectively – only to find that the collection points are not as clean and green as she’d been led to believe. David Attenborough’s imploring tones narrating over Blue Planet are included and add to Ella’s desperation. As the show continues, the space becomes increasingly smothered in the waste that she has accumulated. It is a powerful moral tale and one which needs to be heard – we are cleansing ourselves by relocating our pollution to a country even less able to deal with it than we are – green washing is real.

Verity Mullan, with total commitment and energy, uses the space fearlessly, using simple props and levels to build a host of characters and replay their interactions. The success of a great storyteller is evident by the number of characters which are so vividly drawn without ever being seen. Allotment Alan’s grubby finger nails and world-weary cynicism echoed silently around the stone walls, whilst step-sister Stusi’s black eyeliner and heavy fringe was equally vivid!

If the intention of this piece is to provoke thought and discussion, then it does this by the bin full.