November 3, 2025 10:29 pm
By Michael Sommers
★★★☆☆ Stephen Kunken is good as a bad guy in a new Royal Shakespeare drama about special interests and global warming
The ensemble of Kyoto. Photo: Emilio Madrid
“Now the story you’re about to see is true, but as a lawyer I have to say that some scenes and characters have been invented for practical purposes,” candidly notes Don Pearlman, the narrator and real-life central figure of Kyoto. Drawn from relatively recent history by English playwrights Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson, Kyoto dramatizes how a special interest group funded by the international oil industry impeded and sabotaged ongoing United Nations efforts to effectively recognize, let alone combat, global warming during the 1990s.
Opening on Monday in its U.S. premiere at Lincoln Center Theater’s Mitzi E. Newhouse space, Kyoto is imported by the Royal Shakespeare Company, which presented the play originally in Stratford-Upon-Avon in 2024. The production then enjoyed a four-month run in a 600-seat London theater in 2025. Kyoto is staged here by its original directors, Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin, along with their same ace design team plus several leading actors from the West End iteration.
Heading a 14-member company is Stephen Kunken, a sterling American artist who originated the role of Pearlman (1935–2005), a Harvard- and Yale-educated legal wonk in the Reagan administration with a specialty in energy policy. Hired as a lobbyist by oil interests, Pearlman plots its shadow campaign to discredit climate science. Meanwhile, he entangles the U.N. delegations in procedural issues, textual minutiae, and diplomatic maneuvering as they strive to develop the Kyoto Protocol on carbon emissions during their several meetings around the globe.
[Read Frank Scheck’s ★★★★★ review here.]
Here’s the wonderful thing about the ingratiatingly written character of Pearlman that fuses with Kunken’s devilish performance as a misleading man: You really, really like him a lot until you realize he’s the bad guy. That dawning recognition depends upon your advance knowledge of the sad history that Kyoto relates in overabundant detail in two acts and well over two hours.
Murphy and Robertson ably construct their play to function as a rapid ride through dozens of short scenes delivered by a 14-actor ensemble depicting numerous characters gassing away on complex issues such as the greenhouse effect or wheeling and dealing through plenary sessions. In its densely packed dramatic style and investigative purpose, Kyoto recalls similar history-based muckrakers: J.T. Rogers’ Corruption, about the Murdoch phone hacking scandal, staged at the Newhouse in early 2024; Ayad Akhtar’s Junk, regarding 1980s Wall Street greed, which played upstairs at LCT’s Beaumont in 2017; and Lucy Prebble’s Enron, a look at the Texas energy company’s crash. Enjoyed those plays with one-word titles? You may like Kyoto.
Backed by a translucent projection wall for video designer Akhila Krishnan’s series of still and live images, Miriam Buether’s fluent scenic design neatly anchors the 299-seat stadium-style Newhouse space. Its central stage is filled by a vast circular conference table ringed by seats, a few delegated to lucky spectators. The actors, dressed by designer Natalie Pryce to appear distinctive as various international folk, hustle through their scenes both atop and around the table.
Giving Pearlman a frank, self-deprecating manner as he chats with the audience, Kunken initially registers as an agreeable guy and then gradually turns ugly. Also from the English production, Jorge Bosch offers a delightful presence as a savvy Argentinian diplomat. Taiana Tully urgently speaks for island nations dealing with rising oceans. A bluff, gum-chewing Kate Burton acts tough as the USA delegate. A stately Roslyn Ruff, an elegant Dariush Kashani, and Erin Darke, dryly funny in an Angela Merkel cameo, are among other notable performances.
While Kyoto offers striking scenes and moments, often staged at a quick clip by its directors, the play remains a weighty work that’s not always engrossing in spite of the excellence of its actors, who do plenty of heavy lifting to keep it moving along. Once the show suddenly ends, the play’s somewhat foregone conclusion may well leave you flat, with only a bitter taste in your mouth.
Kyoto opened Nov. 3, 2025, at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theatre and runs through Nov. 30. Tickets and information: lct.org
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