Serious, funny, uplifting, poignant, shocking—this terrific new play is a must-see for anyone remotely interested in climate change, or just in experiencing theatrical drama at its very best.
Writers Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson take the audience inside the debating chambers of a series of environmental conferences starting in Berkshire, through Sweden, Geneva, Berlin, Nairobi and Rio to the 1997 COP3 meeting in Kyoto.
After six days there, nothing had been agreed; after the final session, nothing had been agreed; then its Argentine chairman Paul Estrada locks in delegates for an after-hours session, and at 10:17AM on the following morning, 150 nations, each with a power of veto, agree a global deal that would mean a reduction of 5% in emissions by industrialised nations from 1990 levels by 2012, plus a controversial carbon trading arrangement.
Diplomats, some of whom had gone without sleep for 48 hours, jumped up, applauding, hugging each other. Even if the US and others subsequently disowned the protocol, it was a moment of miraculous unanimity across the world, one achieved, as the UK’s John Prescott recalled, through "diplomacy by exhaustion."
It is an exhilarating spectacle, as China and the US, Saudi Arabia and a pro-agreement Europe—with Angela Merkel taking pride in working together with Britain—battle to preserve their interests. One of the most cutting interventions comes from the Tanzanian delegate, forcibly played by Jude Akuwudike, who complains about the West: "your emissions are of luxury, ours are of survival."
The piece is revelatory in many ways, for example in claiming that oil producers were warned back in 1957 that continued use of fossil fuels would lead to climate catastrophe. But potential theatre-goers should not be put off by thinking they will be subjected to a tendentious history lesson. It is so much better than that.
The success of the play is partly down to its clever construction, setting as its principal character and narrator Don Pearlman, a lawyer employed by dark figures from the US oil industry, who works to thwart or at least emasculate any agreement, often playing off one side against another.
American actor Stephen Kunken, who won a Tony award for playing the chief financial officer in Enron, the story of the Texas energy giant’s scandalous collapse, is tremendous as the devil’s advocate, lacerating the US envoy with threats, cajoling the Saudi to maintain a hard line.
Until it comes to a little character assassination, words are his weapons of choice, for frustration or delay. In the Berlin conference, for example, delegates debate 28 adjectives before deciding upon ‘discernible’ to describe human influence on climate change.
Commas, colons, apostrophes, brackets (which define unagreed proposals) are subject of interminable debate, and there is a glorious scene, like one from Ionescu, after translators’ contracts have expired and they have gone home for the night, when the delegates shout punctuation marks across the floor, each in their own language.
Heroes emerge, however: Estrada (Jorge Bosch) works tirelessly to achieve consensus and, having done so, breaks down in tears as he brings down his gavel on agreement 28, the final clause of the historic Kyoto protocol; and the delegate (Andrea Gatchalian) from Kiribati, a tiny republic in Oceania, which according to the play was instrumental in setting up the Alliance of Small Island States, whose powerful intervention puts the existential threat to nations like hers firmly on the agenda.
Ferdy Roberts plays John Prescott with gusto, but the lampoon about the former deputy PM’s obsession with lunch seems a little unfair. Nancy Crane (USA), Raad Rawi (Saudi Arabia), Kwong Loke (China), Ingrid Oliver (Merkel), Togo Igawa (Japan) and Dale Rapley (Al Gore) also bring to the fore their national characters as much as their economic interests.
Just when you think it’s all over, up steps Jenna Augen as Pearlman’s long-neglected wife, now widow, to deliver a haunting epilogue about simple, familiar concerns, a brilliant switch from the transcendental to quotidian family values.
I could not decide whether the play is hopeful or cynical. A single word can change history, it shows, but humans choose the words. So the question remains open.