A round-up of reviews for the RSC’s world premiere production of Kyoto by Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson.
Following its premiere in Stratford-upon-Avon, Kyoto is now playing at the West End’s @sohoplace theatre in London, booking to 3 May 2025.
Read reviews from the Evening Standard, The Times and more.
This fast-paced political thriller recounts the fateful hours of tense negotiations leading up to the historic signing of the UN’s landmark climate conference in December 1997, and sees big oil, big money and big egos clash in the battle to secure the world’s first legally binding emissions targets.
The production reunites the creative team behind the multi-award-winning hit The Jungle, including writers Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson, and co-directors Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin. Daldry and Martin also worked together on directing Stranger Things: The First Shadow at the West End’s Phoenix Theatre.
The London cast includes Tony award-nominated actor Stephen Kunken (A Spy Among Friends, Billions, The Handmaid’s Tale) reprises his celebrated role as American oil lobbyist and master strategist, Don Pearlman, after making his RSC debut earlier this year.
Also returning to the cast are Jenna Augen (Shirley Pearlman), Olivia Barrowclough (Secretariat), Jorge Bosch (Argentinian ambassador Raul Estrada Oyuela), Nancy Crane (USA), Andrea Gatchalian (Kiribati, AOSIS), Togo Igawa (Japan, Ohki), Kwong Loke (China, Zhong), Dale Rapley (Bolin, Santer, Gore), Raad Rawi (Saudi Arabia, Al Sabban) and Ferdy Roberts (UK, Prescott, Houghton).
The creative team for Kyoto includes; Miriam Buether (Set Designer), Natalie Pryce (Costume Designer) Aideen Malone (Lighting Designer), Christopher Reid (Sound Designer), Akhila Krishnan (Video Designer), Paul Englishby (Composer), Gemma Stockwood (Dramaturg) and Julia Horan CDG (Casting Director).
The show scored positive reviews from the critics when it opened in Stratford-upon-Avon in June 2024, with four stars from a number of the major outlets including the Guardian, Financial Times and The Observer.
Kyoto is playing @sohoplace Theatre in London until 3 May 2025.
Book tickets to KYOTO at @Sohoplace Theatre in London
Kyoto reviews
What’s On Stage
★★★★★
“A crucial piece of theatre that nudges the world a little”
“A play about protocols, punctuation, politics and procedure doesn’t sound like the stuff of dream drama. Yet Kyoto, about the behind-the-scenes battles to create the first global agreement on combating dangerous climate change, is a work of Shakespearean sweep and ambition, an invigorating and challenging piece of political theatre.”
“In Stephen Kunken’s wiry, energetic performance, he is also extremely funny, even while he is outlining his strategies to derail attempts at compromise. In fact, the entire play, for all its seriousness, is engagingly witty – there is one brilliant scene that is entirely about punctuation changes – and the heft and humour of its script enables everyone to lean in, feeling they understand what is going on and are fully engaged with the debate unfolding.”
“It takes recent events of vital importance to the world and makes them into a play that genuinely increases understanding. In a time of disagreement, it asserts the power of coming together. It nudges the world a little. It’s a fantastic achievement.”
Sarah Crompton, What’s On Stage
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TimeOut
★★★★
“US actor Stephen Kunken is riveting as a cynical oil lobbyist in this improbably thrilling drama about the 1997 Kyoto climate change summit”
“Kyoto, by Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson, is so indecently entertaining it almost feels like the result of a bet to choose the dullest, worthiest subject imaginable and make it as fun as humanly possible.”
“… the secret is that Kyoto is actually a play about a total bastard. Don Pearlman was a real oil lobbyist whose finger prints were all over climate conferences in the ‘90s. Rather brilliantly, Murphy and Robertson have made him their protagonist: it’s not a worthy play about well-meaning people trying to stop climate change; it’s about one man and a shady oil cartel’s efforts to make sure nobody does anything about it. US actor Stephen Kunken is terrific as Pearlman”
“With its clippy, globe-hopping storytelling, entertaining barrage of factoids, dizzying array of historical figures in cameo roles (Angela Merkel! John Prescott!) and arch fourth-wall breaking, the vibe is definitely not a million miles away from a James Graham play. Which is a good thing. Murphy and Robertson aren’t quite as accomplished at being James Graham as James Graham is – but they’re close enough, and he can’t write about every single historical event.”
Andrzej Lukowski, TimeOut
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The Evening Standard
★★★★
“This bravura show turns real life climate change talks into a gripping thriller”
“Billions star Stephen Kunken puts in a seductively charismatic central performance as a lawyer funded by Big Oil to derail consensus on limiting carbon emissions”
“Astonishingly, writers Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson have fashioned a taut and gripping thriller from 10 years of international climate change negotiations that resulted in the symbolically huge but eventually neutered 1997 Kyoto protocol. Their play gets a bravura, showmanlike production from directors Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin for the Royal Shakespeare Company – a troupe that’s alive to big themes, betrayals and manipulations, and the slipperiness of language, which is important here.”
“One can see the two Joes’ workings but that doesn’t make this play any less impressive. It has an urgent propulsive thrust and is genuinely daring: a polyglot argument about punctuation is far, far funnier than it should be.”
Nick Curtis, The Evening Standard
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The Times
★★★★
“How to turn a climate conference into gripping theatre”
“If you want a lucid breakdown of the impact of climate change, this isn’t it. But this RSC production at Sohoplace in London brilliantly fillets the facts into drama”
“Not since the mid-2000s heyday of Lynne Truss’s book Eats, Shoots & Leaves have the ins and outs of punctuation been so firmly centre-stage. Yet amid the strategic hoopla of Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson’s thriller, an adroit pureeing of a decade of global environmental politicking into an absorbing night of fact-heavy theatre set around a doughnut-shaped conference table, it’s the little details that leap out at you.”
“It’s a great central performance by the American actor Stephen Kunken (Billions, The Handmaid’s Tale). He emits wiry, irked brio throughout as he narrates and interacts with Jenna Augen as his wife, Shirley, and the other 12 cast members as delegates, oil executives and politicians.”
“Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin’s production barrels along, though it could do with more changes of pace. If this is infotainment, it’s infotainment deluxe.”
Dominic Maxwell, The Times
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Daily Express
★★★★
“Director Stephen Daldry and playwriting duo Joes Murphy and Robertson of theatre company Good Chance have taken the three COP conferences culminating in Kyoto in 1997 and spun them into a political thriller that is as exciting as it is informative. “
“Conducted like an epic local council meeting in which egos, complacency and entitlement drag negotiations into the mire, civilised debate turns to farce as Chairman Raul Estrada-Oyuela (Jorge Bosch) attempts to get the Protocol terms finalised. What emerges about the Kyoto conference, each rep starts talking in their own language like the Tower of Babel staged by the Marx Brothers. You won’t believe your ears about your future.”
Neil Norman, Daily Express
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The Telegraph
★★★
“A fine production that misses the real story”
“This play about the landmark 1997 Kyoto Protocol consistently moves with effervescent vigour – but has little to say about climate change”
“That Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson’s play about the landmark climate change agreement is never remotely dull is a triumph against the odds to match the Protocol itself, even if its success is significantly down to co-director Stephen Daldry, who ensures that this near-three-hour marathon consistently moves with effervescent vigour.”
“Like a leaner, more venal Richard III, Stephen Kunken’s Pearlman casts the audience almost as co-conspirators as he mobilises China and Saudi Arabia in a semi-confected culture war against the decadent West…”
“… Kyoto has little to say about climate change other than to drive home our abject failure to find a common way forward to prevent it. Dissent is part of the human condition, is Pearlman’s stab at an answer. It feels helplessly inadequate, rather like, as is now commonly agreed, the Kyoto Protocol itself.”
Claire Allfree, The Telegraph
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Variety
“A Riveting, Fast-Paced Political Thriller About Climate Change Accords Makes West End Leap”
“As urgent and vital as it is, an investigation into international angles on climate change doesn’t sound remotely theatrical, let alone a race-to-the finish thriller. But that is precisely what directors Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin achieve with Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson’s strikingly smart “Kyoto.””
“Yes, this is a play focusing on climate change, but its real subject is the perilous journey from fixed beliefs to necessary compromise. Horse-trading, ends vs. means, and how understanding and movement can be effected are what it is really all about. This isn’t about the environment: it’s cut-throat diplomacy.”
“The growing absurdity of everyone’s behavior is, surprisingly, extraordinarily funny, best of all in the late stages. Everything turns joyously surreal as all the delegates hurls one-liners at each other in a hilarious, fast-paced fantasia on the absolute high-seriousness of every conceivable piece of punctuation within a single paragraph.”
David Benedict, Variety
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Average Rating: 4 Stars based on 6 reviews
CriticScore: 80 based on 6 reviews
Kyoto
@sohoplace Theatre, London
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📷 Main photo: Kyoto at the RSC. Stephen Kunken and cast. Photo by Manuel Harlan
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