Far more than a green polemic, this Frankenstein of a play is a glorious absurdist blend of stand-up, drama, dance/disco radio and mime.
Kill Climate Deniers is a Frankenstein of a play: an assemblage of genres - absurdist, stand-up, drama, dance/disco, AV/TV, radio, mime.
The script for this slice of metatheatre is the best and most ambitious I have yet seen.
Superficially it asks what it would take to stop climate change? But it is far more than a green polemic.
Environment Minister Gwen Malkin (the hilarious Aussie comic Felicity Ward) is interviewed by aggressive, alt-right shock jock Jalan Ones (Radio Spooner?).
Smugly hijacking climate vocabulary without a clue what she is talking about, she announces that she is funding research to "block out the sun." The PM wastes no time in sacking her - via Twitter.
Meanwhile, in another part of Sydney, a bunch of eco-chic terrorists plan to storm Australia's Parliament building ... during a Fleetwood Mac concert.
By the end of her very stressful day, Malkin and press adviser Georgina Bekken (a brilliantly dead pan Kelly Paterniti) will be Ramboesque heroes who have confronted the terrorists and triumphed ... and, more importantly, will have acquired millions of social media followers.
Over the performance's ninety minutes, the audience was Mesmerised by the inventiveness, frenetic action, sparkling dialogue (scripted and ad lib) and the depth of what was unfolding before them.
The narrator Finnigan regularly chips in with a commentary, additional backgrounders and how the play came to be written, funded and then pilloried by Aussie right wing head-bangers.
Kill Climate Deniers offers some startling insights into how badly we are dealing the climate crisis and what motivates the deniers. But is also a savage critique of the complacency and arrogance of our elected representatives, the virtue signalling of environmentalists and the confrontational way we are dealing with the existential threat of climate change.
More disturbingly, Finnigan's narrative could equally apply to democracy, inequalities, homophobia ...
Don't miss it.
4/5
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