Review: Kyoto from RSC @SohoPlace

Last Updated on August 12, 2025

Climate change takes centre stage @sohoplace theatre

4.0 out of 5.0 stars

As the LA fires continue to rage, the effects of climate change are only too evident on our screens this week. Kyoto, opening @sohoplace theatre, feels especially prescient. Referencing the international protocol signed in Kyoto in  December 1997 to commit states to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the play is a timely reminder of a dramatic part of climate negotiation history.

Written by Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson and directed by Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin, it cleverly narrates the story from the point of view of a climate change denier, this political drama tracks the American oil lobbyist and lawyer, Don Pearlman (Stephen Kunken), who employed by the oil industry, is determined to prevent climate negotiations from setting targets and timetables – the Kyoto protocol finally did so after 10 years of wrangling with Pearlman’s machinations playing a large part in the delay. He meets an Argentinian lawyer and diplomat, Raul Estrada (Jorge Bosch), who has become interested in the growing climate conversation. The contrasting personalities of the two men and their equal determination, using different tactics, to win the day form the backdrop to the negotiations. Pearlman is determined to win the case for his clients, the seven major oil companies known as The Seven Sisters, and sets up an NGO to gain access to the negotiations at which Estrada has been appointed chair.

Drawing on the real-life tensions that surrounded the negotiations at COP 3 in Kyoto – UK Deputy PM John Prescott reducing the Japanese premier to tears being just one drama, the talks drag on for 50 hours, leading Prescott to coin the phrase. ‘diplomacy by exhaustion’. The rivalry between Pearlman and Estrada enables the talks to become a riveting drama, the human face of what might otherwise be a play about the talks which could easily feel like a seminar. In fact, Kyoto is more like a crash course in the early days of climate negotiations and is a stark and depressing depiction of the power of the lobby groups and the destruction they wreak behind the scenes.

Kunken’s performance as Don Pearlman was turbocharged, a man with manic and messianic belief in himself and determined to win at all costs even if that cost is the future of the planet. As the negotiations reach breaking point he says to Estrada ‘It’s not a negotiation, it’s hand-to-hand combat’.  His depiction of a charismatic character, very funny and very vile, was so powerful that Kunken received some boos during the curtain call, which he recognised as praise for how convincing his performance had been.  Bosch as Raul Estrada presented a warm and humane foil to Pearlman and he played his part with humour and physical wit. John Prescott (Ferdy Roberts) was a well-written character who repeatedly brought the house down. The casting was very well done in that this is a multilingual production at points and actors were selected who were proficient in the languages of the countries they represented.

The script is generally excellent – pacy, informative and very funny – especially considering the dry nature of the material. It makes humour out of the nitpicking and negotiating of each controversial line, comma and parenthesis, rendering detail intelligible and digestible. It does, though, try to pack in too much information and by the time interval rolled around, my mind was overfilled with facts and the second half felt a bit repetitive even though the drama was building. The director kept the play galloping along at pace.

I was less convinced by the ending of the play when it turns its attention to Pearlman as a family man with little time for his family, and a somewhat sentimental monologue by Shirley (Jenna Augen), Pearlman’s long-suffering wife. Nevertheless, the production brought enormous energy to the stage which possibly surprised many in the audience, settling in for a more ‘serious’ historical drama.

@sohoplace is the perfect theatre to stage Kyoto as the ‘in the round’ setting is transformed into the Kyoto Conference Centre with the nations of the world in deadlock around the round table. Some of the audience members become delegates in the play, sitting around the table itself. The staging ( Miriam Buether) was deceptively simple – two desks on a bare stage with excellent use of a video screen (Akhila Krishnan) at the back of the stage onto which historical footage was projected as well as the wording over which delegates would deliberate for hours. It was an important visual aid to accompany the script but also livened up what was otherwise a bland stage.

Kyoto, a joint production between the Royal Shakespeare Company and Good Chance, had a successful run at Stratford-upon-Avon and has now transferred to the West End for a limited run of 16 weeks.

Kyoto runs at @sohoplace until 3 May 2025

@sohoplace
4 Soho Place,
Charing Cross Road,
London W1D 3BG