AT THE SUMMIT OF RAGE AND HOPE
Fear not, this isn’t a Greta-gloom lecture but a lively, imaginative, borderline wild reconstruction of the years culminating in COP3 climate summit in 1997. Kyoto was historic in the breadth of its final unity on a protocol to limit global warming, never mind that the years since have dented that agreement and we all woke this morning to some pretty bad figures. Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson – backed by the RSC and Good Chance – make it well worth hearing the story of this furious, angry jigsaw of “diplomacy through exhaustion” . After all it did achieve a signature from 150 nations, some of whom had not previously heard of each other: giant powers nonplussed by being challenged by tiny “stains on the map”, and being made to listen.
The brilliant dramatic twist is that ,as in Richard III ,the central figure and guiding narrator is the main villain: climate-change-refusenik Don Pearlman, lawyer and lobbyist for Big Oil. Stephen Kunken is a marvel, spare and vigorous and lawyerly, clicking his fingers and striding around the great table, driving to despair his patient wife (Jenna Augen) as he prowls the summits over years, watching and jeering and being taken aback.
The show is dense and big and excellent in its pace and pauses: sometimes unbearably shouty , sometimes offering a sudden moment of awe. There’s a Brazilian rainforest moment when Werner Herzog tips up with actors to annoy Pearlman, and there’s that fragment from A Midsummer Night’s Dream about “distemperature…the seasons alter”; suddenly our antihero grasps that the climate cause has become fashionable – “a brand, a movement, an identity” not just a scientific squabble and one he might win through scorn and character-assassination. The pre-Kyoto moment of Japanese stillness is beautiful too, cutting through the rage. But the rage is grand too: Andrea Gatchalian as the Pacific islands of Kiribati shouting “We will not drown in silence!”, but also American Don asking “Is this what we fought the Cold War for, to be bossed about?” And more movingly calling on his Jewish-Lithuanian roots and the way America saved people and let them work and prosper.
On it goes, meeting after meeting until the big one, wonderful rows about square brackets and nuanced words (“pledge” versus “aim”, “discernable” versus “clear”). Rows erupt over targets and timetables, cost in jobs and prosperity. The question of America’s status and supreme rights is a hot one – wonderfully topical as President Trump Mk 2 approaches – and Aicha Kossoko asTanzania speaks for the developing world with withering scorn, pointing out to rich America and the West that “Your emissions are luxuries , ours are for survival”.
It’s grand ensemble work, but apart from Kunken there are tremendous standout performances , notably Jorge Bosch as Raul Estrada-Oyuela, the indefatigable and decent chairman, and wonderful moments of miffed determination from Raad Rawi as Saudi Arabia and Kwong Loke as the permanently annoyed China delegate. Our John Prescott has a splendid moment (|Ferdy Roberts) both complaining about the lack of lunch but then offering the real wisdom acquired in his ‘20s as a young seaman’s union negotiation: you have to keep talking. Always keep talking. In the end it works…just. Despite the darkly comic moment overnight at the end when the interpreters go off duty and ancient Babel overwhelms the great room in a terrible projected alphabet soup.
It’s an exhilarating evening, another slam-dunk for Nimax’s very cool new theatre. And yes, Ed Miliband was there, two rows in front of me . Joined the standing ovation: well, he would, wouldn’t he?
sohoplace.org. to 3 May
rating. five
theatreCat 