Mr Darwin's Tree

|PIC1|What would the private, controversy-averse naturalist have made of it? A century and a half after Charles Darwin made known his theory of natural selection and described it as ‘like confessing a murder’, first Hollywood – in the film Creation – and now Christian playwright Murray Watts have re-enacted the crime.

Darwin’s ghost need not worry too much. Watts’ play, Mr Darwin’s Tree, was commissioned by the theology think tank Theos as part of its ‘Rescuing Darwin’ project.

The aim, its director Paul Woolley explained at the play’s Westminster Abbey premiere, was to rescue Darwin from a modern-day battle between atheists and Christians in which he would have little interest.

So the show’s 75-minute bravura performance by solo actor Andrew Harrison, works hard to uncover Darwin’s soul-searching over his loss of faith and "the terrible void" he feared it could create between him and Emma, his devout Christian wife.

So far so familiar for those who have seen Creation. But Watts’ skittering history takes us hop, skipping and jumping through most of Darwin’s life. It starts with Darwin as an eight-year-old bedazzled by birdsong and butterflies and takes us leaping on to his years at Cambridge (an unproductive study of divinity), to the Galapagos, marriage and family, and on to his final years. It even includes his follow-up bestseller to The Origin of the Species – on the habits of the humble earthworm!

As well as racing through Darwin himself, Andrew Harrison is continually character hopping from his main character to his family, friends, colleagues and critics.
He portrays Emma’s own attempts to argue her husband back from the doubts that ‘swept over him’, for example, and the debates of his friend Rev Charles Kingsley – who reached a fresh interpretation of the Bible to accommodate evolution – with Thomas Huxley, an arch-sceptic.

For anyone who has seen Watts’ and Harrison’s portrayal of William Wilberforce in The Walk, the play’s style will be familiar. Moods shift from wistful longing to deflating humour, and flights of poetry alternate with information bursts and historical quotation. All of which succeeded in keeping me hooked from start to finish.

If the play has a weakness it is that somehow Darwin’s struggles don’t move us as deeply as they might. Perhaps this is a result of the all-angles storytelling or because we sense Watts’ own regret that Darwin was unable to reconcile his studies with a living faith.

But in a little over an hour Mr Darwin’s Tree packs a great deal of history and fascinating insight. And the soaring nave of Westminster Abbey, where Darwin was also laid to rest, was a fitting location for its premiere.

There is a kind of rescue since Watts reclaims the great man from the current in-fighting. But, like his wife in the final scene, the play can only leave Darwin’s destiny in greater hands.

Next performance: Thursday 26 November, 6 pm, The Chapel, King’s College London, WC2R 2LS. Contact christopher.sharpe@kcl.ac.uk
for tickets. For info on other performances, email hello@theosthinktank.co.uk

Lindsay Shaw is a freelance writer and editor