The Trials - Donmar

This suddenly just became a hot ticket.

Just booked Priority Tickets for this - the 16th and 17th are off sale (showing as 'Sold Out') so there are only 14 performances in total on sale. First date I chose (midweek, week 2) only had circle seats available but second date I chose had a few scattered around the stalls and got decent side seats (let's hope it's a designer who's actually seen the inside of the Donmar before opening night).

Rejoined the Donmar for this as OH works in the area of Climate Change/Adaptation so was keen and reckoned membership was my only chance for tix...

I guess this explains why tickets on general sale are so limited:

Was expecting a bit more hassle but got decent priced ticket for the one day I could make this, so I'm happy. Not many of the ultra-cheap tickets for the under 30s left for that day either.

Was late logging in but had no issue finding a seat.
Looking forward to it.

First show tonight. 1hr 35mins no interval according to the website. Will be there tomorrow - practically sold out now across the short run. Anyone going tonight at all?

Managed to get a ticket for this yesterday for the corresponding performance the following week using their daily release scheme:

DONMAR DAILY RELEASE means there are tickets available for our productions every day. A small allocation of tickets priced from £10 – £45 will be released every morning, Monday – Saturday, at 10am for performances seven days later. Book online or call the box office on 020 3282 3808. Please note these won't be available for performances on 16, 17 and 27 August at 7.30pm.

If anyone is looking for a ticket I'd suggest continually refresh the page with the seat map on it from about 9:57am - yesterday they released a handful of seats at 9:58am at various prices.

I also saw this last night, and I also saw Dawn King's Ciphers at the Bush, and Foxfinder at the Ambassadors, and of the three, I found this one the most compelling: a topical, thoughtful, involving and impactful piece of science fiction/ court room drama about climate change - "12 Angry Men" crossed with "Logan's Run," albeit it falls down as a piece about justice, tyranny and the legal process.

Some spoilers follow. . .

This is a tale of one jury and three trials, for climate change related offenses, the defendants being an advertising corporate (Nigel Lindsay), a Green party supporting theatre writer (Lucy Cohu) and a penitent oil exec (Sharon Small).

If this is "Twelve Angry Teens," then our putative Henry Fonda, bent on giving the defendants a fair chance, is Francis Dourado's bleeding heart, Mohammed and our dour sour Lee J Cobb, bent on quickfire guilty verdicts, is Joe Locke's Noah (yes, the butter-wouldn't-melt Joe Locke of Heartstoppers is out for blood lol).

Unfortunately, Dawn King does not frame the case sufficiently for us to get a handle on how necessary and just the trials are, so it is impossible to know whether Mohammed or Noah is more in the right. After all, in a regular trial, the law would be clear, and the jurors' only function would be to understand and interpret it.

Here, none of the defendants broke the law of the time (now) they were living in, but in the future of the play, climate change has rendered the world unfit for habitation (to such a degree, that like in Logan's Run, just opening a door to the outside looks perilous), and the defendants must answer for their part in bringing this horror about.

That's all well and good, but King fails to frame the Trials:

(1) Is the point that the climate changed world can't sustain so many people, so a certain percentage must die, for the rest to live? If so, what is the percentage of total defendants that must die, as that would guide us on how many people need to be convicted?

(2) Or is the point that this is a punitive exercise, regardless, and climate change deniers and abusers must die whether or not they need to do so for the others to live? Certainly, this is how many of the jurors seem to frame the debate.

(3) Or, is this an exercise in building a society in which people who are useful should survive, even if they were previously climate change abusers?

Unlike in "Twelve Angry Men," these 12 teen jurors can seemingly take or leave any of these justifications for trying these defendants, with no exhortations from a dispassionate judge meting out a fixed legal framework, meaning it is the composition and prejudices of the jury that are actually paramount, and not what the defendants actually did. This is why the piece fails as a commentary on law, justice and tyranny.

Where the production succeeds in spades is in reminding us about climate change. Climate change is indeed wrecking the ability of humans and animals to live on this planet (I'm not worried about the planet, I'm sure it will do fine without us, as it did before we evolved lol), and for obvious reasons, we and our politicians are only ever focused on today and not tomorrow, so we are sleepwalking into a horrible future for our descendants. So, to have our descendants hold us to account in a play feels prescient and urgent.

My favourite performance of the night was given by Lucy Cohu, who plays the kind of Green voting, green cause promoting, theatre maker, who nonetheless uses lots of fossil fuels in travelling about lol. Cohu's impassioned defense of us, against our descendants, was furious and heartfelt and disturbing, and she presented the most perfect mirror for theatre-going types to see themselves, and wonder, is it really all the fault of Trump and Xi and Putin and Big Oil and the Gods of fossil fuels, as we may frequently say, or can we actually do a bit more ourselves lol? The fact that it was casually hotter yesterday than on most days of the infamous 1976 heatwave only made the play feel more urgent! Perhaps I'll forget all this again, when the heatwave abates, and book another holiday abroad, but I hope not.

As far as plays about climate change go, this one covers all bases of the debate, through it's many teenage avatars, with Charlie Reid's Tomaz being particularly amusing, who, like most of us, just lives day to day, and can't be bothered to think about any of it. In that sense, nothing ever changes, and Reid gives a memorable performance as a teen rebel in a world where teen rebels will probably end up cancelled, and he gets all the best lines lol.

Both Sharon Small and Nigel Lindsay were compelling in their respective roles as defendants, as was Honor Kneafsey as the jury foreman, William Gao as a juror more concerned with art and poetry and Mereana Tomlinson, as Kako, perhaps the most thoughtful of all the jurors.

All in all, as a piece on climate change, this was a million times more interesting and compelling viewing than that climate change lecture at the Royal Court in 2014, called 2071, which Billington awarded 5 stars.

This isn't well-enough crafted to merit 5 stars, as we have no way of knowing if Joe Locke's character is a burgeoning teenage Robespierre, or just talking common sense, but I happily give it four stars for making me think so much about climate change, without once being bored.

Saw it tonight and bit of a curate's egg, this one - needs a much firmer, steadier directorial hand than the one provided by Natalie Abrahami; I kept wondering what Rob Icke would have brought to it. As it is, the first third is dismayingly flat and very few of the jurors, alas, really show any theatrical muscle at all - Joe Locke is among the few (he's also got a good stage voice). Lucy Cohu is superb as she always is but the very end doesn't land and the whole thing feels as if it's not quite ready to open - which is a shame since it opens tomorrow.

Interesting - I'm seeing this on the 25th, so I don't as yet have any opinions about the content...

...but I had looked at the cast, and, knowing nothing about the characters, already thought that Joe Locke's agent had done quite well here - given the number of people in the cast, none of them can surely have that big a role, and this is, on what is surely a technicality*, Joe Locke's "First Professional Theatrical Role" (according to the Donmar's website). It feels pretty low stakes, in terms of responsibility on his shoulders, gets him that first professional credit, and the Donmar has a good rep, so it all looks good on his CV.



*He's done stuff on the Isle of Man, so whilst this might be his first professional role, it's not his first theatre acting experience. 

Semi-random question, is there a standard Donmar programme available for this? The things to know email before our visit has a £2 digital programme linked and says the book is £7.50 which seems to suggest there might not be?

Thank you!