See a show and help save the planet as the West End turns green

After Extinction Rebellion’s call for urgent action on the streets of London last year, the issue of climate change is to stage another major London takeover. From 23 March, the wider environmental debate will dominate proceedings inside a West End theatre for eight weeks.

Performers including Alistair McGowan, Rob Brydon, Gaby Roslin and Jason Manford are to join experts in the field at the Charing Cross theatre, alongside the double Olivier award-winner and West End leading lady, Janie Dee, for the inaugural London Climate Change festival.

Dee, the force behind the festival, is soon to star on stage in the hit American comedy Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, which has its London premiere at the Charing Cross theatre on 21 March. The play won a succession of top awards during its run in New York, where it starred Sigourney Weaver. The London Climate Change festival, formally unveiled on Monday, will run from March to May and will feature standup, dance, music and cabaret, in addition to talks from a changing line-up of visiting speakers, including the popular environmentalist and author Natalie Fee. It is to be staged with the support of the Grantham Institute on Climate Change and the Environment and the Victoria and Albert Museum, which is loaning exhibits from its recent show, FOOD: Bigger than the Plate. There will also be a series of original displays of key information about how private individuals can slow down the growing impact of climate change.

“Inspired by Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, we have set up the London Climate Change festival to inform, motivate and bring both hope and guidance on how to live a plastic- and carbon-free life,” said Dee, explaining that she felt uncomfortable about ignoring the problem while appearing in the play. “We want to bring both a necessary focus and ease to the immediate challenges of how we live on this planet.”

Dee, who starred with Imelda Staunton in the highly praised National Theatre production of Stephen Sondheim’s Follies, is now appearing as Madame Dubonnet in an acclaimed Menier Chocolate Factory revival of the Sandy Wilson musical The Boy Friend. But she has put the festival together during breaks in rehearsals.

“In this country, we are all using three times the resources we should be, so this festival needs to be a place for safe conversation from all sides of the debate. We need to be able to talk, to find a positive way to tell the story, at the same time as we all individually withdraw from as many harmful practices as we can,” she said.

The festival will bring together contributors from the arts, science and business and the proceeds from its events will be split between the campaigning groups City to Sea, founded by Fee, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, and will also help fund further future activities of the London Climate Change festival.

During the day, the Wild Geese theatre company will run workshops for school groups, encouraging them through games and scenes to write a one-act play on the subject of the planet. The workshops will be designed to get visiting children to share their thoughts and ideas for lowering carbon emissions and eradicating the use of plastic.

Artists from the world of entertainment will be attending as well as performing, along with leading activists, scientists, broadcasters and journalists, including Observer food writer Jay Rayner. There will also be ecologically ethical food and drink available, with the collaboration of the acclaimed chef Skye Gyngell.
On Wednesdays and Thursdays, audience Q&A sessions with leading scientists will take place in the auditorium. Among the environmentalists and theorists involved are the teenage conservationist and influencer Bella Lack, and the psychotherapist Caroline Hickman.

Evening ‘warm up’ sessions will take place at 7pm, with 20 minutes of standup comedy from performers including Brydon, Manford, and Steve Furst, best known as Little Britain’s Lenny Beige, followed by the full performance of the Tony Award-winning Christopher Durang play, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike. Set in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, the British production, directed by Tony Award-winner Walter Bobbie, was first performed to critical acclaim at the Theatre Royal Bath last summer. It is a parodic tribute to the poignant plays of Anton Chekov and it tells the story of a brother and sister who are visited by their successful sister, an actress, and her younger boyfriend.