With characters including a vain and villainous plastic bag named Brendan and a sourdough starter named Beverly, a play having its world premiere in Hobart on Wednesday could only have been written by one man: the Guardian Australia’s very own cartoonist, First Dog on the Moon.
The Carbon Neutral Adventures of the Indefatigable Enviroteens, a carbon-neutral production based on First Dog’s bestselling book of the same name, follows young superheroes who must overcome obstacles to save the planet. It’s a bit like a comedic Captain Planet for our times, but with more anthropomorphised objects, more marsupials and many more googly eyes. Aimed at school kids and families, it’s also about friendship and working together to get really hard jobs done.
When director Ben Winspear, who runs Archipelago Productions with actor and wife Marta Dusseldorp, read First Dog’s book with his daughter two years ago, he saw the stage potential for a unique take on the calamitous issue.
“It’s got such strong dialogue we were thinking ‘it’s almost like a play already’,” he says. “I enjoyed it so much as a parent, and my daughter enjoyed it so much, which is First Dog’s whole idea – to create something that brings generations together in conversation around the issue of climate change. We just thought, ‘Oh, this is going to be easy!’”
But the adaptation process has been an emotional rollercoaster for First Dog, the pseudonym of cartoonist Andrew Marlton, who was tasked with cutting down his book to something that would fit within one hour. He is fittingly dramatic about the experience.
“I had to suffer the agonies of tearing the book to pieces and ruining, RUINING THE WHOLE THING!” Marlton cries. “Leaving just a bloodied stump of a narrative for these people to then go on and mangle even further!”
It was tough for Marlton, who had never written a play before. “Ben said ‘Well, you just take out all the stuff that isn’t talking’, which is a good place to start … but I put a lot of words into things. Then to really reduce it to find the essence of what I wanted to say but also make it hang together, it’s a very different, difficult way of working.”
The hard yards have given way to the good times. When Marlton walked into the rehearsal space for the first time, he was taken aback by the work of puppet and costume designer Anja Reinalda, who had created such spot-on 3D versions of the characters that had lived only in his head and on paper for years.
“I got quite emotional,” he says. “I got a bit teary, because it was like I’d walked into my own mind. All of these creatures and ridiculous things that scramble about in my brain were suddenly out in the world and they all looked just right. I just can’t really put into words how delightful the experience has been of watching these young people bring it to life. It’s one of the highlights of my career and I consider myself incredibly fortunate.”
Fittingly for a show born from the imagination of a Walkley-winning newspaper cartoonist, rehearsals have been held at Hobart’s Detached Gallery in the Old Mercury Building, where the daily Mercury newspaper was put together for 150 years until it moved in 2012. The immense basement still smells of industry and ink, and the black handprints of workers from the past remain. But a few days before showtime, the ground floor rehearsal space is full of life, with the enthusiastic (nay, indefatigable) young cast cracking each other up among endearingly handmade sets and tables of googly eyed puppets straight off a First Dog page.
Twenty-three-year-old Bhavika Sharma, whose first professional role is Letitia the Genius Wombat, says the climate crisis was a really important issue for her. “It can be quite overwhelming, but the play simplifies the concept through its characters and their journey. It’s a really fun play, it’s full of fun.”
The show marks 19-year-old Griffin McLaughlin’s second professional turn, adding the roles of both Pastry Person and Worried Norman to his CV. “Something like climate change can feel so insurmountable, you don’t know how to begin to do something to fight it, and I think this show really speaks to that,” he says.
“It is important to know you can rely on each other and that it is something that is solvable, if we work together.”
The Carbon Neutral Adventures of the Indefatigable Enviroteens premieres at the Theatre Royal in Hobart on 19 April and runs until 29 April
