Bad science

Kill Climate Deniers is a provocative satire by Australian theatre-activist David Finnigan. The title sounds misanthropic and faintly deranged but the show is a comedy delivered with oodles of verve and fun. Finnigan is a skilful writer of dialogue, a gifted farceur and, at times, an astute analyst of power and its corrupting tendencies. Like most Aussies, he’s incapable of pomposity and his show takes a pop at every player in this game: the politicians, the shock jocks, the sainted Greens and the media.

A TV journalist has the surname ‘Ile’ — an anagram of ‘lie’. Finnigan reminds us that the bulk of eco-warriors are white middle-class malcontents whose priority is not to save planet Earth but to get themselves noticed. (It would be fascinating to learn how many of Extinction Rebellion’s bongo-bangers are the second children in a family of three.)

The play opens with a goofy minister, Gwen, making a blunder during a TV interview that leads to a running tussle with her irascible publicist Georgina. They get caught up in a siege at Parliament House, in Canberra, after a gang of eco-rebels disguised as security guards storm the building. The tale follows the Die Hard plot and we watch as Gwen and Georgina snatch weapons from wounded rebels and try to defeat the revolution. The violence is bang-bang-you’re-dead comic-book stuff. There’s no blood. And the gunfire rat-a-tat-tats from a soundtrack. To add to the unthreatening sense of silliness, the terrorists use codenames borrowed from famous pop acts: ‘Aretha’, ‘Ike and Tina’, ‘Fleetwood Mac’.

But there are hints of something darker here. The characters support a plan to deflect sunlight by creating a ‘milky white ceiling’ above the Earth using chemicals sprayed from ‘a fleet of customised high-flying aircraft’.