Writer: David Finnigan
Director: Atri Banerjee
The European premiere of David Finnigan’s Scenes from the Climate Era stages this urgent, vital, darkly comic play in the round. The audience sits on all four sides, meaning there is no escape for the four actors who are constantly on or beside stage in the course of the 50-scene 80-minute drama. The audience can’t hide either. There’s no proscenium arch to divide players and spectators, and Ryan Joseph Stafford’s excellent lighting design sometimes lights the audience too, making them part of the show. In this reflective, dynamic drama, dozens of fractured stories are pieced together into a powerful mosaic.
Climate Change is a central and terrifying fact of contemporary life. It’s a hugely important theme, but very difficult to write well about. The play’s opening scene sees Harriet Gordon-Anderson and Ziggy Heath discussing whether or not to have a baby. Their performances are so immediate and convincing that the two-minute scene has the impact of a whole play in itself (as do several of the vignettes that follow).
It’s a dilemma explored in Duncan Macmillan’s Lungs, performed in 2019 at the Old Vic by Matt Smith and Clare Foy. But whereas Lungs often felt torturous and painful, Scenes from the Climate Era, from the Gate Theatre, immediately and cleverly diffuses the angst with bittersweet comedy to stop the audience switching off. In one scene, Gordon-Anderson, now playing a scientist, bemoans the fact that the messengers are also tasked with making the message more palatable. There are chilling scenes in TV studios with Don’t Look Up vibes.
Set in the past and future and across the world (Antarctica, China, Wales, Paris…), the play’s varied scenarios look back at early modelling of climate data and forward to its possible outcomes. But somehow, miraculously, it dances through these glimpses of catastrophe without preaching or getting bogged down – even during a discussion about the death of hope.
One scene near the start takes place “tomorrow”, when an audience member is complaining about having had to work hard and then go to a depressing play. Moments of humour, the shifting pace of different scenes, and Atri Banerjee’s thoughtful, innovative direction, help keep the weighty topic beautifully afloat.
All four performers are outstanding and completely committed, playing multiple roles. Miles Barrow addresses the audience directly near the start, briefly becoming a spokesperson for the group, before melding with the ensemble again. Moments later, he is brilliantly channelling one of the speakers at Cop21. Peyvand Sadeghian plays a teacher, researcher, TV producer, construction worker and dozens of other parts. The energetic cast flawlessly delivers the show’s complicated choreography and quickfire script. There’s actual dancing in a couple of scenes set in nightclubs, past and future. Movement director Adi Gortler has even invented a futuristic dance routine with stylised head movements.
Anna Yates’ design is deliberately minimal. There is no set and virtually no props. There are no costume changes. The very few items that make it onstage – four microphones, a jar of lentils, a smoke bomb – are used to great effect. The sound design, by Tom Foskett-Barnes, is impressive. Haunting music, rushing water, approaching storms are seamlessly funnelled into the space. One devastating scene consists of recordings from a riverscape in 2005, 2025 and 2045, showing the recent and projected loss of biodiversity.
“It’s a play about love, it’s a play about grief, it’s a play about family, abandonment, apocalypse, cats,” says Miles Barrow in a video on the theatre’s website. The head-spinning scope and diversity of approaches help make the subject matter digestible and reflect the idea that this is not a localised issue. “The problems are everywhere, so that means the solutions are everywhere too,” one character says. Moving, funny and searingly important, this is pared-down drama at its best.
Runs until 25 October 2025
