(If You’re a Climate Denier)
By Greggory Moore, Curtain Call Columnist
We all know that climate change is happening and that humans have a hand in it.
“We all” is an overstatement, of course, but less so than the wrongheaded talking heads on the right would have us believe. The body of evidence is so solid now that climate-change-denial has more to do with willful cognitive dissonance — for money, for votes, for a foolish need to preserve the status quo — than good-faith belief that there’s no consequence to rain-forest-razing and airborne particulate matter.
But to audiences willing to lay good money down to see the world-premiere staging of Kill Climate Deniers, climate denial is a source of humor rather than the object of real debate. With a plot as message-heavy as its title, David Finnigan’s ironic fantasy about a live-streamed eco-terrorist takeover of a celebrity and government official-laden Fleetwood Mac concert exemplifies the old cliché of preaching to the choir.
This largely renders moot the question of how thought-provoking the play is; so, the only practical consideration is entertainment. And, the answer on that front is mixed. Kill Climate Deniers has a certain charm and wit, but its overdose of rhetoric and ham-handed metafiction keeps it from being all Finnigan wants it to be.
The play opens with this overwrought metafiction — aplay calls attention to itself as a work of fiction. Finnigan made himself the narrator (but played by Ashley Elizabeth Allen, who co-directs with Matt Anderson). From the chronological perspective of 2047, (s)he begins to tell us the story of this play and the uproar it caused back in 2017 — first by way of its inflammatory title, then with how it catalyzed the act of terrorism that constitutes the play’s dramatic action.
Three of the production’s most ragged points are introduced here. The most minor is a curious bit of gender confusion. Finnigan’s script calls for an all-female cast (for no particular reason, it seems). The Garage Theatre is faithful to this directive, even though the production has three male characters — a liberal politician, a conservative talk show host and the playwright — all of whom are explicitly referred to as “he.” The fact that these men are real-life people doesn’t dissipate the inconsistency, which is disorienting enough to cause even the actors to flub a few pertinent lines.
A bigger problem lies in the metafiction itself. When handled skillfully, metafiction can be a magical ingredient. Finnigan, however, is way too explicitly self-conscious with his self-interpolations, often lecturing the audience. Although these sidebars drive toward an ironic twist that partly redeems his frequent derailment of the action, by play’s end the audience is left with the feeling that we could have arrived at our destination by a smoother, more elegant road.
This bumpiness is exacerbated by the show’s multimedia tech elements. This is a production with plenty of music and lighting cues, plus pre-recorded video bits, a few with which Allen interacts. While Finnigan sometimes loses track of how long is too long to stay with these asides, their execution was the bigger problem at the premiere. From volume to transitions, this performance was rough. Hopefully future nights will go better, but it appears that the Garage may have overextended themselves in trying to make the most of Finnigan’s vision.
For all this, the bulk of Kill Climate Deniers concerns the concert’s takeover and what leads up to it. On this count the show is stronger. Susan E. Taylor plays Gwen Malkin, the government’s environment minister. She has a measly 1,600 Twitter followers and always trips up during interviews when she goes off script, which she can’t help doing because of course she knows that anthropomorphic global warming is real. Jenney McAfee is Bekken, Malkin’s press advisor, who aims solely to improve her boss’s media profile. When the two of them happen to be in the loo as the terrorists make their move (part of Kill Climate Deniers hews awfully closely to Die Hard), Bekken knows a golden opportunity when she sees it.
There isn’t a weak player among the supporting cast. As one of the aforementioned bloggers, Rachel Star Albright brings instant joyousness to the stage simply by holding a big fake smile as she contorts through a series of mic-holding poses while peppering Malkin with inflammatory questions. Victoria Dunn delivers one of the production’s cleverest acting choices by raising the pitch of her scream during a switch from slo-mo to real-time.
In Finnigan’s final monologue, (s)he tells us that in 2047 they now know that anthropomorphic climate change wasn’t real, that 97 percent of scientists were wrong, etc. This fact reframes both the play’s 2017 events and all of our current lefty beliefs about climate change. It’s the most effective bit of metafiction — and of social commentary — in the whole play because of just how absurd that possibility is, an absurdity that somehow has enough traction in today’s world to keep it on course for cataclysm. That’s Finnigan’s main point, and it’s a good one.
But Kill Climate Deniers won’t change a single mind. Finnigan knows this, so it’s all the more puzzling why his play is crammed with so much rhetoric. A little less preaching might have gone a long way to keep Kill Climate Deniers more engaging for the audience — people who are already singing Finnigan’s tune.
Kill Climate Deniers is playing at 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, through Oct. 7, at the Garage Theatre, 251 E. 7th St., Long Beach. The cost per ticket is $15 to $20 (Thursday tickets are two for one).
Details: (562) 433-8337; thegaragetheatre.org