Review: "The Climate Fables: The Collapse of the Hubbard Glacier" Puts Its Protagonist–and the Planet–in Some Deep Waters
The Climate Fables: The Collapse of the Hubbard Glacier
Written by Padraig Bond
Directed by My Le
Presented by Torch Ensemble and FRIGID New York at UNDER St. Marks
94 St. Marks Place, Manhattan, NYC
August 29-31, 2024
Following a short poetic, incantatory opening, we are introduced to Richard Kether (Luis Feliciano) and his daughter, Miranda (Tiffany Munoz). Audiences met an older Miranda in the spring 2024 production of Debating Extinction, which takes place later in the Climate Fables timeline (you can read our review here), and here we meet her at the beginning of what will be a long journey that sees her take up an unlooked-for mantle. This younger Miranda begins the play on a boat with her father, against her will, headed for the Hubbard Glacier, located in Alaska and the Yukon. Richard, who worked in the U.S. Navy, knows that the glacier is poised for imminent collapse, one effect of the human-caused climate change wreaking havoc on the world ecology, and, wracked with guilt and running from the government, he has made the suicidal decision that he and Miranda will witness that collapse. The enormity of the glacier means that much of the west coast of the United States will be submerged, but, as we find out later, that will soon be just part of humanity's problems. Pursuing Richard and Miranda in the hope of saving them from Richard's decision are Richard's son, 22-year-old Aquila (Nolan Donohue), Quil for short, and his beloved, Fred Oakland (Jack Pappas), both Navy men, and now, both deserters. Will they catch up to their quarry in time? Will it matter if they do? And what other forces are at play here?Discussing ancient things that have been disgorged by receding glaciers around the world, Richard asks what use the past holds if we have no future. Richard's own past, his guilt over serving the interests of empire, which has helped to foreclose humanity's future, but also his guilt over one particular individual death, contributes to his desire to die on his own terms at the same time as it provides one example of how the large and small scale intersect and mirror one another in the play. The literal return of the planet's past in the loss of its icy expanses carries more dangers than just flooding: Richard's noting the presence of long-frozen bacteria and viruses, for instance, reminds us that there doesn't need to be something Lovecraftian beneath the ice for its emergence to be catastrophic. Within such contexts, the disintegration of the Hubbard Glacier–effectively realized through the production's light and sound design, along with some white drapings–also works as metaphor for the Kether family (and arguably society at large as well). In the play's climax, set in motion by a character to whose anger–and mercy–Kristen Hoffman lends an imposing grandiosity (aided by Rhiannon Ling in a clever auditory effect), Pappas and Munoz deliver some outstanding, impassioned moments as Fred's warmth, calm, and humor crash into Miranda's devastation, panic, and despair. Miranda faces the question of how any one (young) person can not only persist but have an impact in the face of a promise of swift, merciless, unavoidable destruction–a question that, as our real world heads towards convergence with that imagined by The Climate Fables, could apply to any and all of us.
-John R. Ziegler and Leah Richards
Review of The Climate Fables: Debating Extinction
Review of The Climate Fables: The Trash Garden
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