Scenes from the Climate Era at The Playground Theatre
We begin with a dismaying scene, not only for its contents but for its very form. A couple are in a heated debate over the prospect of bringing children into an already climate-ravaged world, knowing that the effects of a single child will undo an entire lifetime of green-friendly living. Naturally, the couple reconcile themselves to the idea, knowing it’s a risk they are willing to take. At this point, we can tell the scene is a little cannier than the school assembly-ready set-up. The performances are a little sharper, the points are a little more eloquently put; our intelligence isn’t being insulted, but we’re not free of the stale smell of didacticism either. It’s at this point that Scenes from the Climate Era reveals its hand, as mocking applause emanates from a member of the crowd who promptly joins the couple onstage, directing his eyerolling dismissal of the trite sentimentality of it all towards the audience. Tonally, the moment perfectly encapsulates the show to come: arch, verbose, a little self-admiring, but commendably eager to keep the audience on its toes.
Indeed, Scenes often feels free associative enough that the scene-setting declarations of “Courtroom: 2022” and “Nightclub: 2030” feel almost like a betrayal. There are no set characters amongst Scenes’ ensemble of four, and few props to speak of. Instead, we are shuffled from one scenario and format to another, unified by the overarching theme of climate anxiety, denial, and the push-pull of hope and despair. Unexpectedly, the resulting rhythm may be most evocative of Richard Linklater’s rambling Waking Life, and it is to the great credit of director David Finnigan and designer Anna Yates that the play feels visually and sonically expansive enough to warrant the cinematic comparison.
By way of lighting pyrotechnics and full use of the square-shaped staging space, we are promptly placed within the raging nihilism of a near-future nightclub, or a frigid news station facing down the unenviable task of instilling “hope”, a word that seems to mean less and less with its every repetition. Often, the cast will adopt thin veneers of character types – say, enthusiastically stoned college students – to carry out their debates, but other times they will simply position themselves on opposing corners of the room to direct their questions at each other via microphone. Improbably, the results are immersive, if sometimes scattered.
Scenes from the Climate Era may be inescapably a polemic, but it can feel like a laudably confrontational one, placing harsh emphasis on the scratchy physical particulars of a worsening climate (homes rendered uninhabitable by overwhelming heat; burning birds; the inadequacy of the plastic flap on a baby’s pram as protection from the sun). Still, there are moments where writer Atri Banerjee advocates in unnervingly persuasive fashion for the abandoning of all hope (and with it, all complacency and passivity), before pivoting to advocate in more sentimental fashion for the importance of community and the ever-renewable potential of hope. The only feasible viewpoint on climate change would, according to Banerjee and co, be an incohesive one, making room for denial, acceptance, grief and hope multiple times over through all the hardships to come. It may be more honest than falsely claiming to have the solution readily at hand, but it isn’t that much more enlightening.
Ultimately, Scenes from the Climate Era risks self-congratulation, but often arrives at a refreshingly frank and bold examination of climate battles, both already lost and soon to be lost, making impressively expansive use of its limited technical resources. If it fails to arrive at any wholly satisfying conclusions, that is no doubt by design.
Thomas Messner
Photos: Courtesy of the Playground Theatre
Scenes from the Climate Era is at The Playground Theatre from 23rd September until 25th October 2025. For further information or to book, visit the theatre’s website here.
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