Wind farms seem like a real­ly good idea. They use wind (a good thing) and they’re a farm (anoth­er good thing) so any­one who com­plains about it should just shut up and think of the polar bears, right?
 
Except it’s a bit dif­fer­ent when those 111-metre-high tow­ers are now all  you can see out the win­dows of your house and you’re wor­ried about the effect the vibra­tions from the tur­bine will have on your dog.
 
This ten­sion between tur­bine-lov­ing pow­er com­pa­nies and the peo­ple who live in the area of a planned wind tur­bine instal­la­tion is at the core of Tur­bine, the new SEEyD The­atre Com­pa­ny pro­duc­tion at Down­stage.
 
More after the jump…

 
The sto­ry focus­es on the Gusten fam­i­ly — wid­ow Gail, daugh­ter Susan and autis­tic son Ariel. They’re fre­quent­ly vis­it­ed by pow­er com­pa­ny rep Mark, who’s kind enough to come over on a Sun­day.
 
The time­line of the play is a lit­tle tricky, jump­ing back­wards and for­wards and with a few slight­ly sur­re­al break-aways. But it’s nev­er con­fus­ing, thanks to the skil­ful light­ing and sound design.
 
I was real­ly impressed with the set design (cour­tesy of co-writer, direc­tor and per­former Tim Spite). The back­drop is a giant white­board sur­face with a basic land­scape sketched on it. Through­out the play, the actors add or erase bits to it as the sto­ry pro­gress­es — sud­den­ly the hills have tur­bines atop them, but there’s also a toast­er get­ting pow­er.
 
Wait, does it all sound real­ly seri­ous? Cos the play was real­ly fun­ny. There’s a nice mix of phys­i­cal humour, wit and a lit­tle bit of fourth-wall-break­ing. It took a while for the audi­ence to warm up, but once things got going it was real­ly enjoy­able.
 
The play toys with the idea of being a “bad future”, where the tur­bines drone omi­nous­ly in the back­ground; and a “good future”, where the the wind farm has brought much hap­pi­ness, but ulti­mate­ly the sto­ry comes down to the very human ele­ment of the Gusten fam­i­ly.
 
Tur­bine is play­ing at Down­stage until 7 March.  (You should go and see it, I reck­on.)