Jeffrey Sweet–Making the Scene

One of the things I value about Lincoln Center Theater is it has a history of putting up large-scale plays that no other management in town would attempt. Now, sometimes they’re from the UK. But then American writers have been discouraged by our managements from writing large-scale non-musical plays. (Among my least-produced plays is American Enterprise, which also won more prizes than anything I’ve written. It’s too damn big for anybody but the occasional college to produce. And yes, this has discouraged me from writing other big plays. I’m betting that other American playwrights feel the same way.)

But the tradition of producing large-scale serious works continues in London, and some of it has ended up at Lincoln Center – Tom Stoppard’s trilogy, The Coast of Utopia, Nick Stafford’s War Horse and, now, Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson’s Kyoto.

It’s about the process by which the Kyoto Protocol, an international effort to address climate change, came into being in 1997. All right, on the surface maybe it’s not the sexiest topic for an evening, but, even when I occasionally got lost in the bureaucratic verbiage (which I think Murphy and Robertson intended), I was held by the panache of the storytelling. (Credit due to co-directors Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin.)

It reminds me of nothing so much as the Peter Stone-Sherman Edwards musical, 1776. We go into the theater knowing that the Declaration of Independence will be written and signed, and still the odds against it happening are so vividly depicted at the top of the show, the ride is a suspenseful one. Similarly, we go into the Mitzi Newhouse knowing about the Kyoto accord (well, some of us do), but the cacophony of conflicting interests makes a successful resolution seem improbable. In 1776, John Adams works tirelessly to accomplish his goal of American independence. In contrast, the central character of Kyoto is a real-life oil lobbyist named Don Pearlman who put all of his effort into blocking the creation and signing of the document.

Played by Stephen Kunken, Pearlman is ostensibly the villain of the piece, but he is ingratiating company, and we cannot help but wonder why this smart, often charming guy is working so tirelessly for a lousy goal. Because we can’t help liking him a little, we also can’t help getting illicit pleasure when his tactics to block and delay succeed. And then, of course, we pull ourselves up short and say to ourselves, “Wait a minute.”

At the end of the play, Pearlman’s wife, Shirley (a lovely performance by Natalie Gold offering a touch of grace in the middle of near-constant tumult), has an affecting monologue covering his final years. She seems to be bewildered that the man she shared her life with should have spent so much of his time, talent and energy to so little purpose. I wonder if many in the audience will ask themselves whether the purposes they’re spending their lives serving are worth it. Or maybe I’m naive. Maybe the corporate attorneys and the hedge fund managers and the employees of the various Trump enterprises will applaud the good work of the actors and go home and sleep just fine.

Kyoto is an entertaining and important play being given a strong production (featuring crisp supporting performances by two of my favorite actors – Kate Burton and Daniel Jenkins) and I am sorry to learn that this is not going to have the longer run.