Atlantis review – Welsh climate crisis drama is a parable for our times

In 2014 residents of Fairbourne in Gwynedd discovered that the local council had decided maintaining sea defences was no longer tenable and, as part of a process of “managed retreat”, the village would be abandoned to the sea by 2055. That timeline has since shifted and been disputed, and although the village is not named, it serves as the inspiration for Emily White’s Atlantis.

Focusing on fisherman Bryn and his wife Gwen (Richard Elfyn and Vivien Parry), the action runs from 2011 to 2039, dramatising what has happened and imagining what comes next as weather systems and a community both come undone. There is lyricism in the play’s unfolding sense of time, moving from the daily to the generational to the geological, and the concerns it raises are pressing.

Yet the domestic beats that refract this catastrophe often feel contrived: dramatic tension is propelled by conveniently antagonistic exchanges and exposition is overstated.

Wales, Fairbourne, Gwynedd

atlantis, welsh drama, climate crisis, fairbourne, gwynedd, managed retreat, sea defences, emily white, richard elfyn, vivien parry