Rising from volcanic tragedy

10 April 2012

When Zinnie Harris's mother first travelled from the remote South Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha to Cape Town, she went up to a car in the middle of the street and stroked it. At the age of six, she hadn't seen anything resembling a motor-vehicle, and the tiny treeless island, with its small, close-knit community, had done nothing to prepare her for the dangers of the outside world.

More than half a century later, Zinnie Harris is persuading audiences to make the reverse journey with a play evoking the lives of a barely literate community that ate penguin eggs as a delicacy and depended for its survival on a supply ship that turned up every six months. It was only when their volcano erupted in 1961, and the islanders were evacuated to Southampton, that this simple, pre-20th century notion of existence was challenged, and manifestations of corruption and the Cold War bubbled to the surface.

At 27, Harris has earned the epithet "writer to watch", and tonight sees her debut at the National Theatre with Further than the Furthest Thing. With RSC and Royal Court commissions bubbling on the hob, she can rest assured that this accomplishment is no flash-in-the-pan success.

You sense she gains a certain mischievous satisfaction from the fact that she was no novel-under-the-bed student: on the contrary, her love of science led her to study zoology at Oxford. She asserts: "That kind of training stands you in good stead for writing. I think the ability and the desire to examine things in absolute tiny detail are necessary for both disciplines."

She initially seems reserved, but the moment she starts talking about her work the shyness deserts her. Her grandfather was sent out to Tristan da Cunha as a clergyman after the Second World War. The poems he wrote about it gave the impression that it was "the last stronghold of simplicity."

Apparently, the Tristan islanders used to say, 'We is from Tristan. We is used to it.' This gives you a sense of their language [which Harris reproduces to great effect], but it also demonstrates the laissez-faire qualities of a community that did not believe in planning. They never thought of saving food, for instance, but would depend on the next supply ship, which sometimes meant months of hardship."

Niki Turner's gorgeous, shimmering set evokes Tristan's natural beauties, but the play marks a series of crises which are brought to a head when the Tristan inhabitants are evicted. Apart from the struggles to acclimatise, the islanders' exile was overshadowed by larger and more sinister political forces: they were prevented from returning because of diplomatic lies that the entire island had been destroyed - to Harris an indication that Western powers wanted to use the island as part of their nuclear strategy. "The only other explanation is that it was too expensive to maintain."

Harris has a scientist's eye for observing how human behaviour changes when the environment is unnervingly shifted. Further than the Furthest Thing touches tangentially on the problems she observed when working as a writing teacher with HIV-positive patients: those on the point of death were strangely traumatised after new combination therapy pills suddenly gave them another 15 years of life.

The theme is set to continue: Harris has just finished taking a writing class for offenders and ex-convicts. For her next play, she wants to deal with prisoners struggling to acclimatise to life outside.

Further than the Furthest Thing is at the Cottesloe until 28 October. Box office: 020 7452 3000.

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