Kyoto @ sohoplace theatre, London
Ever wanted to be part of the solution and not the problem? Well in Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson’s play, you can (with the help of Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin’s direction). And if the price is right, you can literally have a seat at the table — and some small parts to play in the room where it happens.
Don Pearlman (Stephen Kunken) plays a sneaky lawyer sent in by shadowy powers — and perhaps his own conviction — to rock the boat and stop the countries of the world aligning. (192 parties if you will). Followed by his wife Shirley (Jenna Augen) who wants to see something of the world other than the inside of hotels and tribunals, we see the legal convenings through multiple points of view.
National representatives are in place and equipped with impressive prop paperwork (and some PowerPoints) we keep convening and reconvening at a round table to argue it out. Even down to the grammar and punctuation.
Starting off as friends with Raúl Estrada-Oyuela (Jorge Bosch), Argentinian Ambassador to China (who’s the only one available from Argentina to join the conference) Don Pearlman soon becomes independent and a subtle whispering voice planting his ideas and views all over the place to derail things. But what if he’s wrong? And who are the ‘Seven Sisters’ pulling his strings and funding his deviousness?
With plenty of gavel action, wonderful Angela Merkel (Kristin Atherton) takes on Pearlman and Kiribati/AOSIS (Andrea Gatchalian), the ‘small islands’ use their mighty voice to speak wake-up truths to power. Past and present collide as industrialised battle industralising, colonised battle colonisers — quite literally a battle of world views.
Unexpectedly, John Prescott (Ferdy Roberts) became my hero as he showed how Prescott had learnt how to get people talking and listening by keeping them talking. He becomes a secret weapon against Pearlman’s sabotaging and undercutting — he can just talk, even getting people to agree on punctuation — and keep everyone fed. What a negotiator!
Like a James Graham play this is dynamic and compelling modern political-social drama. There’s earthquakes, Herzog performing A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the Amazon and exhaustion as Estrada-Oyuela’s decency and humanity and desire to do the right thing for everyone gavels everyone into shutting up and agreeing. Also moments of beauty as cherry blossom petal float delicately down onto the stage.
Enjoy too the moment when the translators leave and multiple languages are being spoken all at once. So clever! As is the use of the negotiation table as a stage.
At the same time, you can’t help but feel compassion for the energetic Pearlman who feels that he’s doing the right thing, that the science doesn’t prove anything. Pushing the audience we enter the science vs data battles, the paperwork, the bureaucracy, the pettiness and the historic grudges, the clashing dreams of different nations and leaders. And yet a wonder is achieved — silence and agreement.
Whilst this is a play where people shout at each other for two hours thirty minutes, clever use of video montage, graphics, sound and lighting draw us in and keep us there. We all get to be delegates — getting ID badges and lanyards as we go into the auditorium. My only quibble — the cast plays very much to the front (though they’re in the round) and if you sit in the right spot, you can look at the back of heads and backs for much of it. However, the cast all move around a lot so you do get a sense of the drama too. And what a drama it is — even the interval is sponsored by fossil fuels Pearlman screams at us before plunging us into darkness and a need for ice-cream!
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