Kyoto, by Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson, is so indecently entertaining it almost feels like the result of a bet to choose the dullest, worthiest subject imaginable and make it as fun as humanly possible.
The duo’s second play together – following 2017’s The Jungle – is about the Kyoto UN climate change conference of 1997, at which every country on the planet eventually agreed to curb its greenhouse emissions.
It doesn’t make you a climate-change skeptic to think that sounds boring. But the secret is that Kyoto is actually a play about a total bastard.
Don Pearlman was a real oil lobbyist whose finger prints were all over climate conferences in the ‘90s. Rather brilliantly, Murphy and Robertson have made him their protagonist: it’s not a worthy play about well-meaning people trying to stop climate change; it’s about one man and a shady oil cartel’s efforts to make sure nobody does anything about it.
US actor Stephen Kunken is terrific as Pearlman, who we first meet in a scene set at George HW Bush’s inauguration. A junior official for the Reagan administration, lawyer Pearlman has vague plans to go on an extended break with his long-suffering wife Shirley (Jenna Augen), but is instead approached by a shady cabal of black-robed oil executives representing the so-called Seven Sisters, who warn him that an environmental pushback against Big Oil is brewing. Skeptical at first, Pearlman attends some sleepy late ’80s climate conferences and concludes the Sisters are right, and that he can do something about it. Though clearly money is a factor, what makes Kunken’s Pearlman so truly compelling is how personal this feels. Yes, he does have a sort of cranky Republican nihilism that makes him distrust the noble aims of climate scientists and their advocates. But he is also a passionate believer in America – as he explains at one point, he believes that expecting Americans to curb their consumption is an affront to everything America stands for, and he is earnestly convinced that America will simply be able to innovate its way through climate change.
The first half of Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin's tremendously zippy production – which casts us all as delegates, with most of the action taking place on Miriam Buether’s giant conference table set– is not in fact about Kyoto at all, but rather the decade leading up to it. Pearlman moves through an endless string of climate conferences like a shark in a koi pond, his boundless cynicism, endless lawyer’s tricks, and willing partner in Saudi Arabia allowing him to effectively sabotage most of them, fostering international disagreement or bureaucratic quagmires. It’s only at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 that he’s given some pause for thought, noting with alarm determination to do something about climate change is becoming worryingly fashionable.
The second half is a gleeful retelling of Kyoto itself, that’s partly about Pearlman, partly about the psychology of consensus – victory is snatched from the jaws of defeat, in large part because Argentine conference chairman Raúl Estrada-Oyuela takes a crafty nap and then more or less abducts the other, sleep-deprived delegates. Ultimately it’s not so much a play about what Kyoto achieved climate-wise as about the miracle that consensus was achieved at all – it’s a drama that both celebrates that and looks at the strange psychological sleight of hand that was required to bring it about.
With its clippy, globe-hopping storytelling, entertaining barrage of factoids, dizzying array of historical figures in cameo roles (Angela Merkel! John Prescott!) and arch fourth-wall breaking, the vibe is definitely not a million miles away from a James Graham play. Which is a good thing. Murphy and Robertson aren’t quite as accomplished at being James Graham as James Graham is – but they’re close enough, and he can’t write about every single historical event.
While betting big on Pearlman is in many ways the masterstroke, there are a couple of bumps as a result. There are moments where his presence does teeter close to feeling like a rhetorical device, simply there to snarl angrily as the Good Guys do some winning. And for such an unsentimental figure, you get the impression Murphy and Robertson are perhaps excessively fond of him, with a somewhat overlong, slight naff monologue from Augen serving as his eulogy.
It’s not perfect, but it is a total thrill ride. Murphy and Robertson have said they want this to be the first in a trilogy of plays about climate conferences, which seems like a genuinely insane ambition, but there is no denying that they’ve got off to a rip roaring start.
