In the Royal Court’s heyday, when Harley Granville Barker ran the theatre between 1904 and 1907, theatregoers could have seen plays by Shaw, Euripides, Hauptmann, Yeats, Schnitzler, Ibsen and Maeterlinck. What can they see today? They can see a play by Duncan Macmillan and Chris Rapley,” exploring the future of life on earth and climate change”; except it’s not a play.
2071 is a 75-minute lecture delivered by Rapley CBE, who is the Chair of the London Climate Change Partnership and Professor of Climate Science at University College, London. He remains seated throughout and bombards the audience with facts which are difficult to take in at one go. It would have been better if he had spoken from notes (rather than an auto-cue) and engaged with the audience. The proper place for a lecture of this kind would be on television where it would have the full video back-up and somebody with the charisma of Dr Brian Cox to put it across.