The Wider Earth
Natural History Museum, London

SHREWSBURY is very proud if its most famous son, Charles Darwin.

A statue of the venerable scientist, replete with magnificent beard, dominates the entrance to the library, a shopping centre has been named in his honour — he'd have been touched, I’m sure — and Quantum Leap, a travesty of municipal sculpture was erected to celebrate the bicentenary of his birth. A lesson, as if one were needed, in the hubris of Tory-dominated local government

So as a native of the town I was quite at home in the opening scenes of David Morton’s play The Wider Earth. In it, Darwin – not the bearded, established naturalist but an eager and bright young graduate in Bradley Foster's characterisation – journeys through the Shropshire countryside in 1831.