The Trials is fuelled by more than one mission. The centre of Dawn King’s new play is a debate about the climate crisis: when a window is opened on to Georgia Lowe’s sweatily crammed set, gusts of sepia smoke belch in; the world outside is bilious. Yet it goes beyond this to look at intergenerational acrimony and at what counts as justice. As important, Natalie Abrahami’s production aims to open up the idea of who appears on stage and, so, of who owns the default gaze in a theatre. More than half the cast are teenagers making their professional debuts.
In an unspecified time – a future now – the youth are gathered to decide whether particular members of their parents’ generation are climate crisis criminals. The arraigned – played by Lucy Cohu, Nigel Lindsay and Sharon Small – have worked for an oil company, had several non-vegan children, flown around the world. Can guilt be graded? Is remorse a mitigating factor? When does justice become revenge, and suspicion of a “dinosaur” generation begin to interfere with making out the facts? The penalties, delivered to a fizz of red fluorescence, are severe.
