Hattie Morahan and Sam Troughton in Juniper Blood [Marc Brenner]

SET on an Oxfordshire farm, Mike Bartlett’s latest play explores the complexities of building a sustainable future, the personal choices that shape our relationship with the natural world and the ethical contradictions of organic farming.

Lip (Sam Troughton) and Ruth (Hattie Morahan) have left the city behind for a new life in the country. They dream of running a sustainable farm, mixing livestock and crops.

In the first of three acts, they’re visited by Ruth’s feisty stepdaughter Milly (Nadia Parkes) and her friend Femi (Terique Jarrett), who is about to begin an MSc in contemporary rural ecology at Oxford University.

Jonathan Slinger as Tony, the couple’s plain-speaking neighbouring farmer, and Milly’s stroppy asides provide much of the play’s humour. Tony relies on subsidies and advocates the use of fertilisers and pesticides.

Meanwhile, Femi has his own perspective – arguing that organic farming isn’t sustainable in the long run, and suggesting they operate a strict rotation of the fields, ploughing every five or six years. When Ruth falls pregnant, the couple realise they want different things. Lip becomes increasingly drawn to rewilding, rejecting modern conveniences and technology, while Ruth is focused on building a secure future for their child.

By the third act, set two years later, we learn that Ruth holds the largest stake in the farm where Lip was raised, while Milly having shed her earlier reservations, has embraced Lip’s increasingly radical ideology. The drama loses momentum during some of the more didactic passages, and the characters’ emotional shifts occasionally stretch plausibility.

Yet James Macdonald’s assured production benefits from adept perfor­mances. ULTZ’s grassy banks are visually striking, and the Chekhovian shades that surface towards the end add a quiet resonance, evoking the age-old tensions of how we inhabit and manage the land.

Until October 4
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