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Review by Sonia Roberts

 

 

 

A musical about climate change that feels more campy than agenda-driven, The Civilians’ The Great Immensity at The Public Theater follows Phyllis’s (Rebecca Hart) quest to find her Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker husband, Karl (Chris Sullivan) when he disappears on a work trip to the Panama Canal. Karl is tired of his work on Shark Week being edited for entertainment value, his network considering the truths he’s uncovering to be too depressing for their audience. He’s looking for a bold, new way to make a statement that will actually incite change, and he finds his opportunity after meeting Julie (a fantastic Erin Wilhelmi), a teenage Earth Ambassador searching for a revolution of her own to make a splash at the upcoming Global Climate Summit in Paris.

imageThe rest of the energetic ensemble (Damian Baldet, Cindy Cheung, Dan Domingues, Trey Lyford) play a variety of characters (all well-developed and often a lot of fun), deftly switching personas and dialects to transport us from Barro Colorado Island in Panama to Churchill, Canada. Writer/director Steve Cosson and composer Michael Friedman have created an epic tale rife with (occasionally overdramatic) subplots, twists, and turns, though the musical numbers often seem to pop up out of nowhere. Favorite numbers include “Martha and the Lemur,” the catchy anthem “We Are Legion,” and the earnest “The Hot World,” which sets up the gravity of the environmental state of the world in short glimpses into specific cities or natural disasters:

THIS IS MY HOMETOWN DETROIT

THEY USED TO BUILD CARS HERE 

THAT MADE THE COUNTRY RICH

WITH  ALL THE OIL FROM…

THIS IS A PICTURE OF         

A PICTURE OF           

A PICTURE OF 

Mimi Lien’s beautifully simple, transformative set fluidly takes us from one location to the next with support from Jeff Croiter’s lighting and Jason H. Thompson’s projections. The live video feed projected, as Karl interviews his subjects on his journey, is an especially effective design element, allowing for the close-ups usually not available in the theater.

All the twists and turns lead to an astonishing ending, a bit unbelievable, but fitting, as Karl and Julie are looking “to find that switch in the head of every person in the world and turn it on,” a mission that calls for drastic action, which asks if The Civilians have the same mission with The Great Immensity, and if so, how effective, in their eyes, this story is.

*Photos: Richard Termine

THE GREAT IMMENSITY

at The Public Theater

425 Lafayette Street

Running through May 1st

Tickets at www.publictheater.org