Kyoto
Directed by Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin
The Swan Theatre, Stratford Upon Avon
25th June 2024
In this RSC/Good Chance co-production, the stage isn’t so much set for the Kyoto COP 3 summit, but removed entirely. Walking into the Swan Theatre, with delegate lanyards around our necks (I was Uganda) the audience is greeted by a giant round table, with two circles of conference-style chairs circling it, water coolers at each side (for delegates only) and a sense that this production might be something different.
The protagonist, Don Pearlman (the excellent Stephen Kunken) greets us from a-top the round table, addressing the RST audience to begin with, and referencing the global challenges – both human-made and environmental – that the world faces, before deftly contextualising the glory-days of living life in the 1990s, when the “only thing keeping us awake at night was the millennium bug.” This stylisation continues throughout the play, with Don swiftly traversing between action and narrator, introducing segments, participating in them, and commenting on the plot, all seemingly simultaneously.
The central focus of the play is the third Conference of the Parties – the climate conference held in Kyoto in 1997. Lauded as a “historic milestone” where delegates from 150 countries, all with different alliances, blocs, needs and instructions, held talks over 10 days, culminating in an exhausting and gruelling all-night session in which approval was finally awarded to the Kyoto Protocol – a pledge to combat climate change. The story of Kyoto here at the Swan, concentrates on demonstrating how unusual it was for the COP to achieve “unanimity” with every single nation having the power of veto, and how it was the result of almost 10 years of developing relationships, power-play and negotiations that finally led to that point.
While the second act is the COP3 summit itself, the first act concerns itself with the conferences leading to Kyoto, right from the fall of the Berlin Wall, and seen through the lens of Don Pearlman, a Washington lawyer who advocated against combatting climate change. Pearlman is appointed as the founder and leader of the Climate Change Council, by representatives from the “seven sisters” (the world’s biggest oil companies) who are interested in him lobbying and disrupting the talks. Aligning himself with the representative from Saudi Arabia (Raad Rawi) he is very successful in this endeavour over the years, and cements himself firmly in the way of diplomacy.
The international delegates for the most part are known only by their country names, with a handful of recognisable exceptions including Al Gore (Dale Rapley) Angela Merkel (Ingrid Oliver) and John Prescott (Ferdy Roberts.) It is challenging to play such well-known political leaders, and the production does lean into stereotypes, with Roberts’ Prescott a tea-swilling portly northerner, who gets so angry when he has to work through lunch that he procures an entire tea-trolley of food. So too, the delegate from Japan (Togo Igawa) who cries when it seems his nation might be showing disrespect, and “Sue” from the USA (Nancy Crane) who is a ball-buster who constantly walks away. Based closely on a true story, these might be accurate depictions, or they might be a way of communicating characteristics, but there were times that it felt as though this was the only characterisation of some of those people, relying on their differences to get the story across.
The cast are very good, with particular nods to Jorge Bosch’s Raul Estrada-Oyuela (the hero of Kyoto) and Andrea Gatchalian’s Kiribati, the island nation representative who fought so passionately for her people she created an entire international bloc. The ease in which the cast move around the auditorium, sitting amongst those on the front rows, and weaving in and out of the conference space, made it feel immersive at times and allowed us to experience conference rather than just watch it. The set was impressive, and the production got good value out of the big screen at the back of the stage, and the dot-matrix screens around the auditorium which contributed to the content, rather than just displaying it.
The sound and lights are, at times, self-referential, with Pearlman almost conducting them both, and serve to add moments of drama as well as functionality. They strike the balance between us feeling as though we are in a conference arena, and the high stakes theatrical devices, required to maintain interest.
There is a whole plot running alongside the main story surrounding Pearlman’s family life, with his wife Shirley (Jenna Augen) as a constant presence. This leads to a pay-off at the end, as Shirley takes the entire final section of the show, to demonstrate the human cost of this work.
This is a really interesting story showcasing the extraordinary achievements of these delegates and speaking honestly about the balance between caring for the planet, and the infrastructure of global economies, with the ever-looming threat of the giant oil companies who hold a substantial amount of absent power. It is told exceptionally well with passion and insight, in a slick and impressive production, which allows for moments of light-heartedness and welcome humour (the section on a 3-hour argument over a comma placement a highlight) as it serves to show us not only our collaborative history, but also the ongoing challenges the world continues to face. My only real criticism is that I felt it was half an hour too long and spent more time than it needed on minutiae and detail – but then, perhaps that was the entire point.
