Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson’s play about the 1997 conference creates drama out of the climate crisis
On screen, saving the world often involves eye-popping effects and thrilling battles between arch-villains and lone heroes. In real life, it can be — literally — more prosaic.
One lengthy section of Kyoto, the Royal Shakespeare Company’s new play about the groundbreaking 1997 UN climate conference in Kyoto, depicts delegates wrangling over the precise placement of a comma — the sort of micro-detail that can make or break a global deal, but scarcely pulse-quickening drama.
Yet writers Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson managed to turn that mind-numbing process into an electrifying piece of theatre, earning rave reviews when the show opened in Stratford-upon-Avon last summer. Now it has arrived in London’s West End in a production directed by Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin…