With California poised for more fires and a climate-change denying plutocrat back in the White House, the London opening of Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson’s play Kyoto – dramatising the intense negotiation of the world’s first climate change treaty – could hardly be more pertinent.
Scaling up from the intimate Swan theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon to the chrome chic of the West End’s Soho Place, the RSC’s show is exemplary in its immersiveness. As we enter, we’re given conference lanyards – NGO delegate for me – and the actors sit among us, hopping up to take their place on Miriam Buether’s ovoid stage.
It’s politics as glossy spectacle, but then so, increasingly, is the Cop (Conference of the Parties) process it presents to us. And the climate elite were in attendance: UK energy and climate change secretary Ed Miliband two rows in front of me; co-leader of the Greens, Carla Denyer, peering from the circle.
