In December 2006 Riding Lights Theatre Company of York completed the national tour of their latest production Pipe Dreams. This was a witty and at times wacky play developed in association with WaterAid, the UK’s major charity dedicated to the provision of safe domestic water, sanitation and hygiene education to the poorest people in the world. It sounds unlikely, I know, but I laughed and cried ...
Set around an American private investigation bureau, the play’s four characters investigate some suspicious deaths. Starting with a historical case in 19th-century London, where contaminated water supplies were the cause of cholera, the investigators move on to find in 21st-century USA the disconnection of water was the final straw for a woman living alone. In South America a Western Utilities company has inflated the price of connections so that water is unavailable to the ordinary villagers and in Africa untreated water causes disease and death. The story switches between the detectives’ office, which was suffering an unimaginable (and unlikely, but this is theatre!) heat wave and the four scenarios. The value of water was portrayed engagingly and brilliantly as was the situation when it is not freely available (what was it Jesus said . . ‘and I will give you living water’?). Some of the international injustices of the availability and cost of water to the disadvantaged were clearly displayed. There was a prophetic punch to the message and Public Services and churches did not emerge from it totally unscarred so there is my life’s work written off!
Like many Riding Lights shows, it manages to be funny while carrying and communicating a serious social and spiritual message.
