Griffin Theatre Company’s Naturism, staged this month at the Wharf 1 Theatre, arrives with a bold hook: a fully nude cast performing a climate-crisis comedy set in an off-grid naturist commune.
It’s a premise that demands courage from its performers and curiosity from its audience; and on that front, the production delivers. Yet despite its conceptual audacity and several strong performances, the play ultimately struggles to fulfil the thematic promises it sets up.
Directed by Declan Greene and written by Ang Collins, the story centres on a small group of naturists living in isolation, seeking simplicity and purity as the world outside grows hotter, more chaotic, and more online. Into this fragile micro-community arrives a young, idealistic Gen-Z activist (Camila Ponte Alvarez) whose presence fractures the group’s already shaky equilibrium. The cast throw themselves into both the nudity and the comedy with impressive commitment. Glenn Hazeldine brings a brittle, self-styled guru energy to Ray, while Hannah Waterman gives Helen a mix of warmth, eccentricity and quiet yearning. Their dynamic with Nicholas Brown’s Sid and Alvarez’s wide-eyed Evangeline produces some of the show’s brightest comedic sparks.
Visually, the production is strong. The design (James Browne) evokes a lush bush sanctuary on the verge of combustion, underscoring the looming threat that shadows the commune. Lighting (Verity Hampson) and sound (David Bergman) build an atmosphere that shifts between whimsy and unease, hinting at a world where ecological disaster is inevitable, even if the characters refuse to look directly at it.
And that refusal – the delusion, denial and wilful innocence of the commune – is where the play gestures toward deeper themes. But the gestures rarely deepen into something more probing. Naturism positions itself as a climate-crisis comedy, yet the environmental thread often feels like background colour rather than a backbone. The bushfire threat, while theatrically effective, doesn’t translate into sustained dramatic or moral pressure. Similarly, the clash between generational viewpoints promises much, but settles mostly for amusing stereotypes. The older naturists are portrayed as preachy nostalgics, the younger outsider as a hyper-connected influencer, but the script doesn’t push these characters into meaningful confrontation with their own beliefs.
This sense of thematic under-development is most apparent in the play’s middle stretch, where narrative momentum falters. After a lively start, the story drifts, circling its ideas without progressing them. A late reveal about Ray’s past injects drama but feels thematically tacked-on, rather than a natural outgrowth of the story’s moral concerns. The production’s buoyant tone, while enjoyable, weakens the impact of the play’s heavier aspirations. Comedy dominates, often at the expense of clarity about what the play wants to say about climate paralysis or the limitations of alternative living.
Ultimately, Naturism is consistently entertaining, but it reaches for insight it doesn’t quite grasp. For audiences open to a cheeky, unconventional comedy that flirts with big ideas without fully interrogating them, Naturism offers an engaging, memorable night out. But those seeking a more rigorous exploration of the climate emergency or generational ideologies may leave feeling the show, like its carefree commune, avoids the hardest truths.
