SCENES FROM THE CLIMATE ERA

The Playground Theatre

★★★½

“a triumph for the cast and creative team”

David Finnigan’s Scenes from the Climate Era is a disturbing play. It’s meant to be. Even more disturbing is that two years on from its first performance in Sydney, it punches as hard as ever. Is there hope for redemption from the human follies that have brought us into this era? That is the core question of this piece and, playing after the UK’s hottest summer on record, we must ask ourselves whether hope itself is the folly.

Gate Theatre is presenting the European premiere of ‘Scenes’ at The Playground Theatre and the studio style space is exploited perfectly by Gate’s Artistic Lead Atri Banerjee. As the action opens, it feels as if we are looking at a rehearsal – a young couple discussing whether it is responsible to bring a child into this world (a conversation which quickly breaks down into a disagreement about whether paper or plastic is doing more damage). This feeling is intensified as a third actor breaks out from the audience (we are seated ‘in the round’) with startling, thunderous applause to bring the key process into focus.

This process is a disruption of the original ‘SARA’ curve of change management – Shock, Anger, Rejection, Acceptance. Here we are presented instead with three stages: one – denial; two – optimism and solutions; three – grief, anger and despair. In a very short space of time, 80 minutes, over multiple brief scenes (the original had 66 – I lost count in this production that has brought the statistics of the climate crisis bang up to date), we are treated to real and imagined snapshots: dinner party debates; COP speeches; protests; oil company whistle-blowing; scientific predictions; even a dance party that interleaves the conversations.

Framed in sound baths, dramatic changes in lighting, and smoke creeping through the studio, we watch the action range chaotically over time and place. There is a media interview in 1981 about the greenhouse effect; a laboratory in the future where the last of a particular species of frog is being kept alive. The Climate Era as a definition is proposed – a theory that we are now living through a defined era, like the Byzantine one, which will come to an end. How, when and what that might look like are debated. Toward the chilling conclusion, the couple we met at the opening have had their family, and we are still left asking ‘Was that responsible?’

The extraordinary blend of scenarios, dialogue, and special effects is a triumph for the cast and creative team. Miles Barrow, Harriet Gordon-Anderson (an original cast member), Ziggy Heath and Peyvand Sadeghian are the high energy and accomplished physical actors taking us through this small-scale epic, with much owed to the overall design (Anna Yates) and the lighting and sound team.

This is the stuff of theatre. To put the spotlight on a current and sobering topic, present it as entertainment and then drive home the unavoidable importance of the content. If there were a criticism, it is that the switch between scenes is so intense and the range so diverse, it leaves one breathless and with no time to reflect. The single bit of audience involvement business, near the beginning, seems redundant. There is no story arc (that is not the point, we are still in the middle of the era) and the pace is relentless with very few quieter moments. I am sure that this is actually the intention, but the complexity can be overwhelming.

When we get to the last two scenes, Finnigan offers us four endings, each set in different parts of the world, and each offering its own existential conundrum. Then he answers the original question ‘how will we know when the Climate Era has ended?’ with a twist. Whether it is hopeful or not, is down to the way each of us interacts with the prognosis.

SCENES FROM THE CLIMATE ERA

The Playground Theatre,

Reviewed on 7th October 2025

by Louise Sibley

Photography by Marc Brenner

Previously reviewed at this venue:

ARTEFACT | ★★★★ | September 2023

SOMETHING UNSPOKEN | ★★★★ | September 2023

PICASSO | ★★★ | January 2023

REHAB THE MUSICAL | ★★★★★ | September 2022

A MERCHANT OF VENICE | ★½ | November 2021

IDA RUBINSTEIN: THE FINAL ACT | ★★ | September 2021

SCENES FROM

★★★★

“a gentle and delicate slow burner”

Clarkston is a small city in Washington State in the far northwest of the United States, named after William Clark of the famous Lewis and Clark Expedition. Over two centuries ago, the intrepid couple set out on a journey to explore the vast, uncharted lands of the American West. Land that was acquired through the ‘Louisiana Purchase’ (the impact on Native Americans is another matter – for another article, at another time). It was a two-and-a-half-year journey that ended with them setting up camp at what is now Clarkston (not Lewiston?). Two hundred years later, where the rivers meet on the Idaho border, a Costco warehouse store now stands in pride of place.

That much is fact. Fiction now takes over in the form of Samuel D. Hunter’s new play set predominantly in that Costco. Jake (Joe Locke) has made the trek from Connecticut only to wind up as a night shift worker stacking shelves, and is taken under the wing of fellow worker, Chris (Ruaridh Mollica), a local lad. They are essentially chalk and cheese but quickly form a strong, and often tender, bond. Jake comes from an affluent family, educated but complicated, while Chris is stuck in the backwaters trying to save up to go to college. What informs the narrative are the shadows that hang over them: Jake’s in the shape of his progressive Huntington’s disease (he reckons he has eight years left to live at tops), while Chris is eclipsed by the presence of his drug-addict mother, Trisha (Sophie Melville).

Hunter’s writing is solid yet nuanced, achieving a delicate balance of humour and introspection, with complete authenticity. There’s a hopelessness that is somewhat bleak, but the performances keep us engaged throughout and we cannot help but care for these two lost souls. Locke shows real strength as a somewhat weak and ambiguous character, full of contradictions. He claims he has been dumped by his boyfriend, but the relationship was never consummated. His sophistication is a shroud, while Chris is more honest about his inexperience. Mollica’s portrayal is a masterclass in subtlety and understatement, gently revealing a tortured personality. Likewise, the play is a gentle and delicate slow burner, intermittently rippled by Melville’s self-destructive anguish as Trisha. She seems to accept, but cannot fully understand, her son’s sexuality, but Melville gives an utterly convincing show of maternal love that is blurred by the grip of dependency – a dependency not just on her drugs but on Chris too. She occasionally becomes the child, sheepishly downplaying her relapse.

Yet at its centre is the relationship between Jake and Chris. For the most part, this play has the feel of a two-hander. Director, Jack Serio, keeps the naturalism in sharp focus, almost ensuring us that we are witnessing real life (Jake claims to be a direct descendant of the American explorer, William Clark, and we believe it). Milla Clarke’s storehouse set reinforces the realism, and when needed, Stacey Derosier’s evocative lighting transports us to a new dawn on the shores of the Pacific Ocean. We are left with feelings of hope that hint at an escape form the gloom.

“Clarkston” is fairly low on drama, but it is steeped in atmosphere. Moving and vulnerable, it languidly coaxes its themes out of the closet and into our hearts. Not necessarily life-changing but definitely life-affirming. On the surface somewhat ordinary but ultimately shaped into something quite extraordinary.

Tag Archives: Marc Brenner

SCENES FROM THE CLIMATE ERA

★★★½

The Playground Theatre

SCENES FROM THE CLIMATE ERA

The Playground Theatre

★★★½

“a triumph for the cast and creative team”