Genius scientist's longest day

Collapsing Creation, Saturday to Monday, 7pm, Suter Theatre.

There is a photograph in Arthur Meek's collection. The young playwright is framed, smiling alongside his muse in London's Natural History Museum. Alongside Meek sits one of the most influential thinkers of the 19th century, carved in stone and more than 100 years dead.

In a small London study, 150 years ago, a middle-aged, ailing scientist found himself sitting on a bomb. It was a bomb that would change science, thought and ultimately the world.

"And if he let it off, he was going to change the world, but this is about building up the courage to publish and facing the fallout," Meek says.

The scientist was, of course, Charles Darwin, the bomb was the 1859 publication of On the Origin of Species, and the result was, as Meek describes it, "a bloodfest". Enter the drama.

Darwin's best friends were killed because of it, his health deteriorated, his family torn apart. "It's a huge story."

The stage is set for a dramatic reinterpretation of those moments, and it was a stage that Meek wanted to be a part of. He was commissioned by the Allan Wilson Centre for Molecular Ecology and Evolution to create the play Collapsing Creation as part of the 150th anniversary of Darwin's theory of evolution and 200 years since his birth.

Meek knew a little bit about Darwin before embarking on the project but he didn't know how exciting it all would be. Darwin, he discovered, was passionate. "He was the consummate scientist, he did all sorts of things, but beneath all this he was very sick with an illness that no-one could understand."

Darwin's children also battled an undiagnosable affliction. Slowly, as the scientist went about his work, the possibilities arose. "Darwin discovered truths about his own family that he didn't want to know."

His wife was his first cousin, and as he was writing On the Origin of Species, his children were dying. The pressure to change the world became overwhelming, and Darwin's life was collapsing.

In Meek's play, 40 years are condensed into one day. Characters are collapsed. The bomb is collapsed, and Meek likes the effect.

"It just got more and more action-packed, so to fit all of that in there, I decided early on that I wanted the play to be more about the truth than the facts." So, over the course of that one day, Darwin's work confronts the rigid scientific orthodoxy, challenges the profound faith of his wife, and ultimately evolves into ideas beyond his imagination or control.

Meek has spent a lot of time in comedy. His production of On the Conditions and Possibilities of Helen Clark Taking Me As Her Young Lover won its fair share of accolades. But drama is different.

"I wanted to give myself that challenge, but it all happened so fast I didn't have time to think about it. Looking back, though, there was a lot of pressure."

Meek shouldn't have to worry too much, however, with some of the best directors and designers in the country working on his creation.

"I never felt compelled to act in it. I like that thing of creating it and letting other people's talent and creativity add to it."

The playwright now thinks that Darwin is indisputably one of the great geniuses ever to walk the face of the Earth. "Sometimes with that comes a disregard for other aspects of your life."

• Collapsing Creation, Saturday to Monday, 7pm, Suter Theatre. Tickets $38 from Everyman Records, 035483083 or visit everyman.co.nz.

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