Climactic end to a climatic argument, Kill Climate Deniers delivers a playfully provocative ninety minutes of fast and furious fuming with eco warriors from conflicting camps giving lip and shooting from the hip.
Entering the space of the Griffin Theatre, audiences are confronted with a plastic curtain encompassing the perimeter of the stage, seeding a suggestion that Kill Climate Deniers may be a splatter piece. Will there be blood? Will this be a shower scene of psychos?
Apparently, the plastic is just a device to project the show's credits, an artifice to telegraph that this is a “show”, a frantic, farcical fossil fuelled folly of tom-foolery and the screen is removed very soon into the play proper.
David Finnigan's Kill Climate Deniers is theatre presented and informed by film, with the playwright's alter ego, Finig, breaking into the action, part narrator, part chorus, calling the shots like a movie director, alluding to action films, specifically the Die Hard franchise, to set the scene.
It's a ludicrous scenario – federal environment minister, Gwen Malkin, intends to fund a policy to black out the sun and thus put an end to global warming. This incites eco terrorist, Catch, to take Malkin hostage at Fleetwood Mac concert, and ransoming her against the cessation of coal use and the omission of carbon emission.
Gloves and party dress off, Malkin channels Julie Bishop's death stare stance and Michaelia Cash's cornered banshee-ism and goes head to head, toe to toe, small arms to small arms with Catch in a Tarantino-esque shoot out.
Rebecca Massey leads the charge as Gwen Malcolm, a nimble, nubile nugget of bottle rocket dynamism, a pole dancing pistol packing performance that could supply the State's energy grid.
Super support comes from Sheridan Harbridge as Malkin's media advisor, Georgina Bekken, and Lucia Mastrantone as Catch, the shouty sharp tongued and shrill adversary.
Emily Havea does double duty playing diverse characters on either side of the climate debate and Eden Falk is in fine form as the writer/director, Finig.
Kill Climate Deniers is an entertaining addition to the global warning on the effects of global warming and the vital ongoing debate on climate.
Griffin Theatre presents
Kill Climate Deniers
by David Finnigan
Director Lee Lewis
Venue: SBW Stables Theatre | 10 Nimrod Street, Kings Cross NSW
Dates: 23 February – 7 April 2018
Tickets: $60 – $38
Bookings: griffintheatre.com.au
