Fire Fire

Drawing on writer John Webber's experience growing up and working in Thurrock, once one of the UK's primary oil refining hubs, Fire Fire is a poignant two-hander that explores how class can affect climate protest and attitudes towards global warming. 

Paige, a middle-class queer activist with Nigerian heritage from Colchester, is protesting for climate action at a country park where Eddie, a white retired oil worker, is holding a memorial for his brother. They clash in fiery opposition, but their paths keep crossing until, discovering they share a long time, personal struggle to be heard, they join forces and take drastic action. Threaded through with East Anglian folk traditions, fire rituals and an original live drumming soundtrack, the drama transforms this tension between middle-class activism and working-class economic reality into something visceral and communal, with warmth, empathy and humour.

Following a four week run at the Arcola, Fire Fire will tour to 16 venues in the East of England, Brighton and Birmingham.

Writer John Webber said, “I grew up in Thurrock which is this slice of land that sits between the Thames and the A13 and should be marshes really. My housing estate is what you’d expect to find in any inner city from the 1960s - wall to wall concrete and nothing to do - but it’s surrounded by this Green Belt countryside. So as a kid I would walk out with my mates into the wheat fields, see cows, play in the disused abattoir - all the joys of the countryside. This play is full of that tension between the industrial and the bucolic in a way.”

Where: Arcola Theatre, London E8 3DL

When: 9 September – 3 October 2026  

Tickets: From £15

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