Prompted by the 2007 film of the same name, which I found utterly enthralling and spellbinding, I attended a stage version of "The Man From Earth", directed (and performed in) by Freddie Elcock, in London this week. In fact, I have now seen the play twice, and enjoyed the second performance even more than the first, as further details and ramifications unfolded to me.
The essential plot is that a man, “John Oldman” [and the name is significant], is about to leave his post as a university professor, which he has held for 10 years, and arranges a small “do”, as we call them in the UK, to say farewell to some of his closest friends and colleagues, with the usual nibbles and drinks, including a fine bottle of scotch whisky that he has been saving for some time.
All is going fairly well, although there is an underlying unease and tension, mainly stemming from the tacit question of “why” is John leaving?; then he drops the bombshell... that he is actually 14,000 years old.
He is not reincarnated, but has actually lived a single human life, since the end of the last ice age: what is sometimes termed the Late Upper Palaeolithic archaeological period, when the Earth experienced major retreat of glaciers and a transition into a warmer climate. This era marked profound ecological shifts, human expansion into the Americas, and the early roots of settled communities. It is the final phase of the Old Stone Age, when human hunter-gatherers used advanced stone-blade tools, and is set within the broader Pleistocene epoch, which preceded our present Holocene.
While he cannot remember every single day of his epically long life, any more than we mortals can, John has experienced the immensity of change, in both geographical distance and time, travelling around the globe, in its environment, its peoples, their cultures, and technologies: circumnavigating with Columbus (who still thought the world was flat), the industrial revolution, the far more recent rise of techno-industrial civilisation, and here the hint is made that he has become aware that, in the unbridled pursuit of what we have come to regard as “progress”, we are destroying the foundation of our existence; yet he believes it is still not too late for salvation, though time is shortening rapidly.
I use the word salvation deliberately, since John claims to have been a disciple of the Buddha, and that he was, himself, the inspiration for the figure we call Jesus. In this claim, or revelation, he deeply hurts and offends Edith, a devoutly Christian lady, who is horrified when he says that he survived the crucifixion by using techniques he had learned in the “East”, to slow down his metabolism, and feign death; that the biblical account is not literally true, but mythology.
John suggests that religions would work best if they followed the teachings of the Buddha, and that he simply tried to put those ideas [of peace and harmony – the “Eightfold path”] into practice, but the concept was hijacked, and the idea that he was the Messiah, which he never claimed to be, grew from expanding legend.
He seems more or less content, but weary, carrying what must surely be a tremendous burden of endless days, resigned to a fate conferred by a one-off genetic defect. In reality, such longevity is highly unlikely, since we are programmed to die, as a result of oxidative stress (from breathing oxygen), and most creatures, be they flies, rabbits, rats, or humans, begin to rapidly accumulate oxidative damage during the last third of their maximum lifespan – say, aged 60 or so for a human - and increasingly on to their ultimate and unavoidable end. All that lives must eventually die, to be consumed by Nature’s recycling mechanisms, and new life be brought forth.
In the play, however, the question lingers: will our protagonist live forever, or eventually die? Is he blessed, or cursed, by this remarkable congenital hand of cards? John can also be seen as a metaphor, for all of humanity, and not just one extraordinary person. He is a passenger, traveller, probe, and recorder of all he has experienced, and adapted to. He has reinvented himself, in order to survive under different times and circumstances, as they prevailed upon him.
He must, in any case, move on every ten years, so that people do not realise he is ageless, and hence supernatural, and in their fear make him an enemy. It is alluded that there are legends, across time and cultures, about an immortal being, who steals life from the living to sustain itself, and which men seek to kill, in the hope of prolonging their own time on Earth: a silver bullet to the werewolf, or stake through a vampire’s heart.
As the action moves toward the play’s conclusion, John regrets his confession, and makes out that it was all a joke - albeit maybe in poor taste - and one by one the characters leave, bar for Sandy, who says she is in love with him. But, John has seen too many people in his life die, and hence has come to avoid romantic relationships.
Almost to the end, it is not entirely clear if John is telling the truth, is a liar, or crazy, and to explore this, the figure of Will, a psychiatrist - who threatens to have John taken off in a straight jacket for evaluation of his mental state, if he does not confess his story is all a hoax - is pivotal in the plot. Will overhears John and Sandy talking, where John [he has always been “John” or some variant, plus a different surname] mentions some of the pseudonyms he has used along the vast swathe of his life, and recognises one as being the name of his father, who abandoned him and his mother when he was young.
He asks John specific questions – e.g. the name of a childhood pet – which he answers correctly, and in the shock of revelation that this man, apparently younger [looking about 35] than him, is actually his long lost father, Will suffers a heart attack, and dies in his arms. This is the first time John has actually seen one of his adult children die.
The “Man From Earth” is all of us - all part of a single lineage; a kind of collective immortality passed down through generations, but the stuff of myths and legends, that run through most cultures and creeds, belief systems and faiths.
In the final scene, John gets into his truck, intending to drive to wherever his journey, may take him next. But he then reconsiders, stops, and waits for Sandy, who slowly walks over to him.
We are thus poignantly reminded of the preciousness of time, and urged to embrace joy in this world, however fleeting it may prove to be. In similar mood, I recall the lines by Thomas Osbert Mordaunt, a British Army officer and poet, taken from "The Call", which was written during the Seven Years' War of 1756–1763:
"Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife!
Throughout the sensual world proclaim,
One crowded hour of glorious life
Is worth an age without a name."
While none of us can know the future, there are yet indicators. Bill McGuire has highlighted a philosophical reflection by the Persian poet and polymath, Omar Khayyam, from almost 1,000 years ago:
"When I want to understand what is happening today, or try to decide what will happen tomorrow, I look back.”
Hence this ancient insight emphasises that understanding modern, unprecedentedly accelerating climate change requires looking deeply into Earth's geological past, and that studying historical climate patterns and past epochs is essential for predicting where our current climate trajectory is heading. McGuire warns that failing to heed the lessons embedded in Earth's history leaves humanity dangerously unprepared for future climate extremes.
But, the pages of history having been written, what of our future? Are we simply part of a carbon-pulse, a flicker of impermanence, as a complex civilization begins to unravel? Is humanity condemned to a sad end, and if it is, how can we best live in the time that remains to us?
The questions run still deeper: What is a good life? What kind of a world do we want... really?
While there are probably no definitive answers, “backcasting” might offer the best approach to charting our forward journey, aiming toward a way of life we deem desirable, as has been expressed previously:
“... most climate action plans are... working forward from now, which almost tacitly assumes that the future will be substantively like the present.
Backcasting is the reverse of this way of thinking, used in the Transition Towns ideology, which sets a series of steps back, say, from 2050, to the present, in order to provide a logically progressive sequence toward attaining desirable attributes identified for that later date.
By setting year-stones conveniently along a defined pathway, a practical and ideological “rack and pinion” gear is engaged to propel the journey toward its destination, with reduced risks of straying or derailing.”
The play is utterly compelling, and almost 20 years on from the original film, its theme feels all the more resonant with the world that has emerged since. It begs questions of what it means to be fully human: our values, beliefs, relationships, concepts of impermanence and death, and what being alive truly means to us.
Even from the 2017 sequel, “The Man From Earth: Holocene” - in which John has begun to age, and knows his time is, after all, limited - we are now living in very different, and increasingly uncharted territory, as the climate and nature crisis has garnered momentum: in flame, flood and geopolitics, including the outbreak of major wars.
Critically and urgently, we must mitigate consumption of all resources, to steady our course into the future; but like John, also adapt to those changes that are unavoidable.
