Eight peopleāscientists, engineers, soldiersāhead to the South Pole for the winter in 1986. This is the simplest synopsis of Magellanica, the nearly six-hour play by Oregonās E.M. Lewis. Artists Repertory Theatre wants you to ābinge-watchā it, which I begrudgingly admit is accurate terminology.
Winter is dark at the South Pole, where there is āone sunrise and one sunset a year.ā The aurora australis lights the sky in green streaks; one scientist is there to study that. Two climatologists attempt to prove or disprove the existence of a hole in the ozone layer. Two people fall in love, one attacks another, one tries to write a book, one wants to make āa new and accurate map of the world.ā Oneās a Norwegian ornithologist waiting for summer, when heāll head to an island of āonly penguins and French people. Mostly penguins.ā Over eight months of winter, each will try to keep themselves and each other alive, and eventuallyāsureātry to save the world.
Sara Hennessy and Michael Mendelson play the climatologists, she American and he Russian, as they bicker over whoāand whose countryāhas the right to conduct research on climate change, and what that research proves. But Lewis knows what the audience knows: There is a hole in the ozone layer, humans did make it, and 30 years later, the world still needs saving. The argument eventually evolves into one of how to present the truth to a public unwilling to acknowledge it.
