CONTINUITY

The narrators of this play portray actors who are filming a contrived melodrama about climate change. The narrators must make their "film acting" seem credible and different from when they're "not acting." They do this adeptly while at the same time conveying the cast's shallowness and self-absorption, which stand in for the vapidity and self-absorption of a world that is failing to respond to an existential crisis. The play, awash in clichéd Hollywood sex, drug, and power jokes (and scads of swearing), is itself shallow, if brisk, a light, sometimes amusing, piece that makes some impact through an abrupt but authentically telling doomsday speech from the film's science advisor--which only serves to remind us that listening to a play about climate change is more of doing nothing. W.M. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine [Published: APRIL 2023]