Kyoto, Stratford-upon-Avon review — RSC makes compelling drama out of climate-change crisis

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Kyoto is more exciting than it has any right to be, given that the action largely involves a series of stalemated conferences where delegates bandy around acronyms and squabble about the wording of resolutions. The stakes, however, could barely be higher: the fate of the world itself.

The story of the groundbreaking COP3 environmental treaty signed in Japan in 1997 — and the negotiations that led up to it — is complex, and doesn’t seem obviously dramatic material. But in their new play writers Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson, best known for 2017’s The Jungle, have created a theatrical re-enactment of the negotiations, based on multiple sources and interviews with those who were there. Events have been conflated and scenes and conversations imagined, but the thrust remains the same: a battle over what to do about global warming.

Guiding us through the labyrinthine thickets of discussion is lean, sweary Washington lawyer Don Pearlman (a barnstorming performance by Stephen Kunken), breaking the fourth wall to sneer that he knows exactly who we are — soft liberals who look down on lobbyists like him. Don may be employed by the “Seven Sisters”, the nickname for the oil cartel represented here by seven dour black-clad figures, but he’s got the real inside scoop, so we need to shut up and listen.

To get into the climate conferences he must confect a plausible-sounding body: he dreams up the Climate Council, abetted by renegade scientist Fred Singer (Vincent Franklin), belying his white hairs and beard with a sinister, jester-like energy.

The European bloc seeks action and a young delegate from a tiny Pacific island (Andrea Gatchalian) captivates whenever she takes the floor. But Don has allies among the delegates: wily, quarrelsome Saudi Arabia (Raad Rawi) and China (Kwong Loke), both incensed by demands to cut emissions from the profligate west. Don’s spinning and manipulation succeed in stalling progress on climate resolutions for almost a decade, but then the Kyoto conference arrives, chaired by a man he has come to like: Raul Estrada-Oyuela of Argentina. Jorge Bosch, stunning in the role, is the foil to Kunken’s evil genius, a playful but ultimately steely force for change.

The playwrights evoke the tense camaraderie among the major delegates, who become simply Sue (USA) and Zhong (China) off the conference floor. Ingrid Oliver makes an implacable Angela Merkel arriving in Kyoto to quell the infighting, while Ferdy Roberts is sublimely testy as British politician and former seaman John Prescott.

Estrada-Oyuela performs his own brilliant manoeuvres to win the day, but the playwrights have a problem wrapping up, choosing to finish with a long exculpatory monologue by Don’s wife, Shirley, who has more costume changes than Taylor Swift. This is brilliantly delivered by Jenna Augen, but it’s an anticlimax. In a sense, though, we all have a problem with the ending: the climate is still in crisis.

★★★★☆

Runs to July 13, rsc.org.uk