A two and a half hour play about climate conferences doesn’t sound like the most appealing of evenings but this was edge of the seat stuff from start to finish. Documenting the 10 years of delay from the first serious UN climate conferences, we first see the role of the oil companies and their partners in obfuscating and demonising the science, setting parties against each other and forming unholy allowances. Then it moves on to focus on the conference which finally got agreement. The set is a circular conference table and all audience members are given their lanyard and pass as they enter (I was the Norwegian delegate) with some of the front row actually sitting at the table.
In a clever move, it is a charming villain who is our guide here, in the form of Don Perlman (Stephen Kunken) who was a climate sceptic, oil lobbyist lawyer and an active disrupter of agreements, and who weaponises the specific interests of each country against each other. He also lays out the persuasive case for not disrupting life for the sake of saving the climate, highlights the dissonances and hypocrisies in the political processes as well as in our daily lives. He has a great line at the interval blackout
‘and interval drinks are sponsored by BP’ The final Kyoto conference takes up the bulk of the play, and the negotiations and sticking points are handled with clarity and wit so that we always understand what is going on. And may I say, never has the use of punctuation, particularly the comma, been as funny or as gripping. All the performances were great in this, fast paced and intense overlapping dialogue but staying decipherable, but apart from Perlman, I also loved the portrayals of Angela Merkel (Kristin Atherton) and John Prescott (Ferdy Roberts); the latter, a surprisingly effective advocate and negotiator in this interpretation at least.
Another last minute bargain ticket, I had a great view and lovely chats with my fellow audience members including an international student on his first ever visit to the theatre, and a couple from Seattle who started by saying how embarrassed they were to be American, and apologised for their country, although as they pointed out, we have had our own embarrassments such as Boris Johnson who perhaps helped to open the door to Trump - I apologised back!
To take something as dry as a conference, use loads of words, and have us all hanging on every comma or square bracket is an achievement in itself, and it’s also a little reminder that when everyone tries (or we lock our delegates in a room and refuse to let them out till they agree) good things can be achieved. Properly witty, and engaging edge of the seat stuff, it also feels timely and important. And I had not one single complaint about the length of this play, although as it overran by 15 minutes I did persuade a lovely usher to let me out through the back doors rather than join the 15 minute scrum that always occurs at this theatre as everybody bottlenecks at the single set of stairs! There are still cheap seats being released daily and I highly recommend.
On the way to the Soho Place Theatre I had popped into the Outernet which was showing a film called
Forsaken about the mass extinction that is happening around us, focusing on the oceans, with amazing imagery; highlighting that the efforts so far to prevent the impact of climate change don’t even count as a drop in the (polluted, overheating and rising) ocean. It was immediately followed by a mass interactive game of
Tetris on the same screens, showing that we can easily forget about our oncoming extinction and focus on trivia, but also a reminder that humans are capable of working together to achieve amazing things, both big and small if we actually set our minds to it.
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