British playwright Richard Bean brings razor-sharp wit and an amusing sense of the absurd to this high-spirited romp through the fractious terrain of climate change science.
As in his sensational adaptation of the commedia classic The Servant of Two Masters, the skilfully structured plot has scintillating dialogue neatly combined with poignant personal drama and riotous farce.
The impact of the satire is somewhat blunted by a crude dualism in which climate change activists are dishonest, self-serving and incompetent while the sceptical heretic never wavers in her devotion to the exalted realm of pure science.
The strategy will probably reinforce whatever point-of-view audience members bring to the play and the lengthy expositions on interpreting scientific evidence seem pointless when the conclusions are so clearly pre-determined by the stark polarity between the saintly sceptic and her evil tormentors.
There is a lot more subtlety in the play's hilarious dissection of middle-class domestic dysfunction which plunges us into an explosive battle between a well-intentioned working mother and her anorexic, home-schooled daughter.
