Review: The Trials (Southwark Playhouse Borough)

Review by Harry Bower

⭐️⭐️⭐️

What happens when the children inherit the earth, only to find it scorched, poisoned, and hanging by a thread? A revival of The Trials at Southwark Playhouse is a timely, unsettling glimpse into a world where justice for the climate crisis doesn’t come in the form of policy or protest, but punishment. In a society ravaged by environmental collapse, a jury of young people presides over the ‘Climate Trials’, weighing the lives of those who contributed to the destruction of the planet. Their verdicts are not metaphorical; they are final, with execution the ultimate punishment over which they (literally) oversee.

The plot is simple but morally knotty. We watch as three of the ‘dinosaur’ older generation, each a symbol of a different societal failing, submit recorded testimonies in their defence. There’s the advertising exec who peddled plastic, the globe-trotting artist whose carbon footprint dwarfs her creative legacy, and the oil rep whose guilt is matched only by her helplessness. These monologues are cleverly staged as pre-recorded video statements, played back to the jury and to us, before the young jurors lock horns in debate. As the jurors argue, align, and fracture under pressure, we begin to see that justice in this world isn’t just about facts. It’s about rage, trauma, and survival.

Dawn King’s writing walks a fine line between provocation and overstatement. It wants to shake you by the shoulders - to scream “do something!!!” - and at times, it overdoes it. The imagined world is bleak and all too plausible: toxic air, rationed water, no meat, no snow, no future. Beneath the dystopia, there’s a dichotomy. The debates feel lived-in, the generational trauma thoughtfully rendered, not to mention the morally grey questions - like asking if it’s ever fair to condemn someone simply for doing what was considered “normal” in their time. It’s a bold script, not afraid to indict its audience, but it doesn’t quite escape the trap of occasionally feeling more like an exercise than a fully realised story.

Vicky Moran’s direction, however, brings the script to vivid life. Staged in thrust with the audience on three sides, every viewer gets an intimate window into the jury’s deliberations. Movement is natural and effective, pacing is brisk without being breathless, and conflict is regular but usually short and sharp. The moments between the debates, where characters exchange looks, bristle with resentment, or wordlessly reveal exhaustion, are often as revealing as the dialogue itself.

The production is powered by Southwark Theatre’s youth ensemble scheme, an opportunity for young people south of the river with no significant acting training or experience to learn from experts and perform off-West End. In this regard, the scheme is a rip-roaring success. There are some performances in the piece which would not be out of place in a full professional production, with turns by Emma Judge, Rachel Greenwood, Rowan Miller, and Nine Amos in particular, which fuel the play with authenticity, complex emotion, and a tangible sense of jeopardy. All four avoid the trap of playing “youth” as a caricature. Dominique Vincent and Anne-Elizabeth Sowah offer a quiet, stabilising contrast, grounding the more volatile scenes with mature, empathetic turns that deepen the piece’s emotional texture. 

That said, this production isn’t without missteps. The tone occasionally veers into the didactic, particularly in the more explicit scene-setting moments. The moral outrage, while justified, sometimes pushes the performers into overstatement, which breaks the otherwise careful and critical realism of the piece. And while the imagined dystopia is compelling, some aspects, like characters lamenting never having tasted bacon, risk trivialising the stakes when not handled with finesse. It’s clear they’re intended to highlight the naivety and age of those making such critical decisions, but these moments feel slightly out of balance in a piece otherwise committed to emotional realism. 

The Trials is at its best when it channels its fury into character, not caricature. When it lets the audience sit uncomfortably in the grey areas. When it uses the courtroom not just as a theatrical device, but as a mirror. It’s impossible to leave without considering your own carbon sins or wondering how future generations will judge you. Hywel Simons, Kacey Ainsworth, and Nancy Crane in their outstanding video testimony performances, make sure of that. Crane’s monologue in particular risked the dryness of my eyes.

Thankfully, the piece doesn’t unrelentingly scold its audience as some climate-related theatre has a tendency to do. It asks, listens, and ultimately demands that we stop pretending ignorance is an option by showing us what it looks like when we lose both the battle and the war. King refers to the older generation as ‘dinosaurs’ - an irony given how fossil fuels were created - and has written angry characters. That anger is only misplaced in a timeline sense. The Trials will make you wonder in fact, why we aren’t more angry right now, and why the powers that be continue to tell us everything’s fine when we can see quite clearly that it’s not. If you manage to catch this limited production, you will ask yourself the question…if you were in the dock, what would your defence be?

The Trials plays at Southwark Playhouse until Saturday 30 August 2025. For more information visit: https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/productions/the-trials/ 

Photos by David Jensen