The Contingency Plan

The Contingency Plan is the overall title of a pair of plays by the British playwright Steve Waters that opened at the Bush Theatre on 22 April 2009. The two full-length plays are On the Beach and Resilience. They are both set in the United Kingdom in the near future. Both involve the same couple, Will Paxton and Sarika Chatterjee. Paxton is a scientist who has returned from research in Antarctica with a new understanding of glacial melting due to climate change and the corresponding possibilities of a rise in sea levels and of coastal flooding. Michael Billington wrote of the pair of plays that their "flaws pale beside Waters' massive achievement which is to have made the most important issue of our times into engrossing theatre."