REVIEW: Kyoto, Swan Theatre, Stratford, until 13th July, FOUR STARS ****
Peter Sellers slipped on a banana skin or something getting out of a car outside an Indian restaurant in the Kings Road. Hardly front pages news, granted. But he twisted his ankle so badly that he had to surrender a role in Stanley Kubrick’s cold war satire Dr. Strangleove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Sellers was already playing three characters but the fourth that he was pencilled in for, that of Major ‘King’ Kong, was now out of the question.
The part called for a Texan cowboy-type so Kubrick reached out to John Wayne who shunned him. Then Dan Blocker - Hoss in Bonanza - but he didn’t care for the cut of the movie’s political jib. So, Kubrick settled on Louis Burton Lindley Jr., a bit part player and rodeo rider who laboured under the soubriquet Slim Pickens.
Pickens had never travelled outside the USA but he moseyed on down to the courthouse, got himself a passport, made the journey to England and nailed the movie’s most iconic image - Kong riding on the back of the atomic bomb as it dropped to do its devastating business. Pickens just played it straight, as himself, was never given a script beyond his brief few lines, had no idea what exactly he was engaged in and, when his part was done, left without a clue about what the film was about or what its outcome would be.
You can call me Slim. Kyoto may seem quite a far throw from the hysterical daftness of Strangelove but the two works are apocalyptic kin; both harbingers of global destruction, and, just like Pickens, I swaggered into the Swan oblivious to what was about to unfold and left two-and-a-half hours later still in the dark - as we all are - about what will happen next. But we’ll come to all that. First it should be explained that Kyoto, co-written by Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson and precisely co-directed by Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin, is a fictionalised reconstruction of the long series of fledgling climate change conferences which were held around the globe in the early 1990s, culminating in Kyoto, Japan where every country represented was called upon to commit to a prescribed reduction in carbon emissions.
It’s set in an impressively massive boardroom around a round table and our mentor through all these machinations is an American lawyer called Don Pearlman, lately in the employ of President Reagan, who has been covertly employed by a shady bunch of characters in grey who we come to assume are movers and shakers from OPEC, the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries They, for many reasons, mostly monetary, need to ensure the conferences never achieve their goals. Don’s job is, by hook, crook and any other means necessary, to disrupt the proceedings, to discover and expose the many loopholes in the draft agreements, to spread enmity, confusion, jealousy and whatever else he can conjure up throughout the decades-worth of meetings so that nothing ever actually gets done.
Unlikely to alter the widely-held perception that lawyers are parasites on the unfortunate and afflicted lacking in all moral compass, Pearlman is played with chilling conviction by Stephen Kunken - a true supervillain for the age. We are shamefully seduced by his Machiavellian nous. He is a smooth operator, a smart cookie, explaining his strategy, territory by territory, then revealing the scenes of disarray he’s arranged. He’s smug but he’s savvy and we can’t help but admire the puppet master as he’s pulling the strings.
Orchestrating each nation’s reservations, glorying in chaos, he guides us on a journey which begins with doubts as to whether climate change actually exists, onto questioning the science that proves it does, to examining the cataclysmic fiscal effect of imposing restrictions on emissions. He divides to conquer, pitting the developing countries against the big dogs. It’s fascinating to gain insight into how, say, Saudi Arabia might give climate change the cold shoulder on the grounds that restricting the use of fossil fuels would impoverish their citizens who would be bereft of schools, hospitals etc. Not to mention the fact, of course, that all their resources had been nicked by the USA until comparatively recently so now Saudi wants revenge and financial amends at which the States sniggers and baulks.
On the way in, each audience member is given a lanyard so you are a delegate representing a country. I was India. My companion, much to her disgust, was Qatar. And although we are given no actual part to play in the performance, as the claims and counter-claims arise, it’s impossible not to debate within yourself where you stand and what you would be prepared to sacrifice now to save the planet in the long term. Would you give up your car? Would you forgo a journey if it involved air travel? The play insists you measure your debt to ecology versus your personal economy, nowhere near as easy as it sounds.
Kyoto feels like the perfect fit for the RSC right now. It has a contemporary cause for a theme, involves actors from different races and genders and gently challenges the audience intellectually and emotionally. Boxes duly ticked. But make no mistake, Kyoto is a bold, some might even say foolhardy, undertaking as it performs against all theatrical instincts. For a start it is v-e-r-y repetitive and v-e-r-y long which is, of course, partly the point. Conferences are invariably boring and when you take into account that this play’s principal character is hellbent on ensuring it's as frustrating as humanly possible, with each meeting unable to reach any decisions or conclusions, rolling inexorably onto the next, only for Pearlman to lob(by) more spanners into the works, it’s quite something that we are kept engaged.
That said, it ran out of a little steam in the second half. We gradually come to despise Pearlman and resent him as he gets more desperate and dangerous. Never quite achieving its aim of racketing itself up into a thriller, the play enhances the players to help stave off some of the inherent monotony of the (in)action. Nancy Crane is the American delegate, a sparky Hilary Clinton clone hamstrung by a president in Clinton who wants nothing to do with this climate change nonsense. Another laudable effort to leaven the load is the Japanese delegate (Togo Igawa) who informs us that while we have only four seasons in the West, his country has 72 micro seasons which is fascinating stuff but leads somewhat predictably into the revelation that cherry blossom time is getting earlier each year.
There’s also the “circle of agreement”. This is instigated by the chairman, Raul Estrada-Oyuela, Pearlman’s nemesis, a good guy with a big heart played warmly by Jorge Bosch. He devises this game where you meet someone in the midst of the circle if you answer certain questions in the affirmative. It’s a nice little device to bring them together and keep us onside and a little light relief from all the squabbling but it’s surely unbelievable that ambassadors of state would ever engage in such a childlike activity. The bit where they’re haggling over commas and semi-colons is overdone too, to the point of farce.
The real shocker comes in the fulsome shape of Ferdy Roberts who barrels in to the rescue playing the UK’s John Prescott - yup, ol’ Chumbawaamb-ed two Jags, two shags, the godfather of governmental hypocrisy - who bellows for lunch and turns out to be some kind of Churchillian, take-no-nonsense knight-in-rumpled armour. As the tale is here told, he saves the day with his plain-talking bluster which, again, kind of beggars belief.
Ingrid Oliver plays a recognisably accurate Angela Merkel and Pearlman’s character is rounded out by an absent son called Brad who our busy protagonist obviously neglects as the lad’s growing up, and Jenna Augen, who plays Shirley, his wife, who now-and-then pricks his conscience - “Are we on the right side?” - but always stands by her man. She’s given a lengthy epilogue which amounts to a rather tacked-on apology on his behalf now the stress has killed him as she attempts to answer why on what’s-gonna-be-left on earth would he do what he did.
When all’s said and very little done, Kyoto is actually quite a traditional piece. The antihero is defeated and hope prevails. Doesn’t it? For all the agreements reached at Kyoto, what have been the real consequences? The planet is, as Pearlman told us at the very start, still ,“in literal meltdown“ and governments, lobbied by vested interests, are reneging on their promises, with some major powers still in convenient denial that climate change is actually, y’know, a thing.
On stage here, when the deal is reached against all the odds, there’s a cheeky repost from the shadowy grey contingent indicating a diversification of OPEC’s influence including - ha! - supporting the arts. So let me draw your attention to this: five years ago, and some 14 since Pearlman passed away, the RSC reluctantly called time on a BP sponsorship that provided 80,000 tickets to youngsters aged between 16 and 25 over an eight-year period for just £5 each after being petitioned and boycotted by schoolchildren and college students concerned that BP was poisoning their future. Mostly the headlines were congratulatory but BP stated it was “disappointed and dismayed” at the scheme being pulled, a BP bigwig demanding that the arts stop “demonising” the company. The Times insisted that, “Caving in over BP leaves the RSC looking spineless", and the Mail waxed lyrically sceptical: "Alas poor Shakespeare, the last victim of the green zealots: As the RSC bows to young eco militants and axes its BP sponsorship, thousands fewer children are now likely to see the bard's plays.”
Meanwhile, Iate last year, Rishi Sunak announced he planned to abandon or delay core parts of his government’s climate strategy with a “new approach” which means a 2030 ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars will be delayed by five years, the 2035 phaseout of gas boiler sales will be loosened and landlords will not be obliged to insulate their rental properties to higher standards. Throwing the UK even further off course than it already was in meeting its legally binding emissions targets, Sunak declared the rollbacks an “honest” approach to net-zero that removed “unacceptable costs” from “hard-working British people”.
Best of luck finding the accord in that little lot. Like I said, feel free to call me Slim and let us pray that Kyoto wasn't just a load of hot air about a load of hot air.
