'Fizzing and fast-paced': Barry Gardiner reviews 'Kyoto'

'Japan': played by Togo Igawa | Photo by: Manuel Harlan

Barry Gardiner MP

@BarryGardiner

If you ever wondered what it is like to negotiate an international treaty: go and see Kyoto.

If you ever wondered why the United Nations process is so slow: go and see Kyoto.

If you ever wonder how politics is captured by commercial interest: go and see Kyoto.

From the moment actor Stephen Kunken strides onto the stage to announce that we are “all fucked!”, this is a play that grabs you by the lapels and keeps shaking you as it drags you around the conference table to negotiate the first-ever climate change agreement.

Set designer Miriam Buether’s circular stage becomes the conference table around which everything unfolds as we see the brilliantly pugilistic Republican lawyer Don Pearlman (played by Kunken) using ridicule, double dealing, character assassination, appeals to freedom and financial self-interest as his blocking tactics to derail the climate negotiations. Employed by the major oil companies (known as the “Seven Sisters”) to stop the Conference of the Parties (COP) from developing targets and timescales, he was the real-life Mephistopheles who called the scientists “hysterical nerds arguing over computer models” and told the world: “You can’t rip up civilisation on a hypothesis.” The play is the story of his rise and fall as the science gradually becomes clear to everyone except him.

Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson (who also wrote The Jungle about the Calais migrant camps) keep the play fizzing with sharp dialogue – the answer to the hole in the ozone layer: “use more sunscreen”; the NGOs are watermelons: “Green on the outside red on the inside”. But the hard moral questions remain at the core of the play driving the action forward as Kiribati (Andrea Gatchalian) brings together the coalition of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) declaring: “We refuse to drown in silence!”

I can vouch that Ferdy Roberts (bearded!) portrayal of John Prescott is pitch perfect: roistering, robust, ruthless

“You have grown rich on the spoils of our nations whilst we cannot feed our people and treat our sick,” explains Tanzania (Aïcha Kossoko) as they insist that whilst the threat of climate change may be common, the responsibilities must be differentiated. Even Saudi Arabia (Raad Rawi) condemns the USA’s determination to have emissions trading as “a loophole that will allow rich nations to do whatever the fuck they like”, before going on to sabotage a possible agreement by asking for compensation to leave Saudi oil in the ground. As Pearlman says: “This isn’t negotiation. It’s hand-to-hand combat.”

As a veteran of climate COPs for more than 15 years, I wondered before the performance just how they would explain the whole process of bracketing, where words are bracketed in the agreement text and others proposed until consensus is reached, often at the point of exhaustion.

At one COP, negotiators actually proposed 28 different alternatives for the word “appreciable” in the phrase: “The balance of evidence suggests there is an appreciable human influence on the global climate.” Somehow, the play managed to turn what is in reality a most long drawn-out, bitter and pedantic game of three dimensional word-chess into an electric, hilarious and fast-paced roller-coaster with Saudi Arabia, Tanzania, the USA (Nancy Crane) and the European Union (represented by our own John Prescott played by actor Ferdy Roberts) cascading over each other in a bidding auction of commas, adjectives and ampersands.

It was John Prescott who gave the COP chair Raúl Estrada-Oyuela (Jorge Bosch) the key to unlocking the consensus deal in Kyoto. Having sat with John in many subsequent COPs, I can vouch that Ferdy Roberts’ (bearded!) portrayal was pitch-perfect: roistering, robust, ruthless. It made me remember what a loss John’s death was to us all last year. 

 In the foyer afterwards I met Ed Miliband who agreed the Royal Shakespeare Company really had captured the essence of it all.

Barry Gardiner is Labour MP for Brent West

Kyoto
Written by: Joe Murphy & Joe Robertson
Directed by: Stephen Daldry & Justin Martin
Venue: Soho Place, London W1; until 3 May 2025
 

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