★★★½
How long is a life? Roughly three billion seconds, give or take. Sitting inside the intimate traverse stage of KXT Kings Cross Theatre, 3 Billion Seconds feels like a pressure cooker of love, panic and moral calculus. This play demands that you account for your existence. Fundamentally, it asks: what does it mean to bring life into a world you believe is already burning?
Written by Maud Dromgoole and produced by Blinking Light Theatre, 3 Billion Seconds taps into a growing wave of contemporary theatre grappling with climate anxiety and generational dread. We follow Daisy and Michael, two committed climate activists, who discover they are expecting a child.
What follows is a spiralling attempt to reconcile their beliefs with the environmental cost of reproduction. Their solution? To offset their future child’s carbon footprint by any means necessary.
At the centre are two electrifying performances. Izabella Louk’s Daisy is ferocious and razor-sharp, balancing manic conviction with flickers of vulnerability. Opposite her, Victor Y Z Xu delivers an earnest and conflicted Michael. Together, they create a dynamic that is as volatile as it is believable, capturing the messy, often contradictory nature of love under pressure.
Both actors have to play multiple characters throughout the show and do a brilliant job of distinguishing who is who – even in scenes where they have to act opposite themselves.
There are two beautifully tender scenes in the middle of the play. A monologue delivered by Victor to his dying Dad with Alzheimer’s, and then a scene between Izabella as Daisy and Victor as his Dad. Both tug on the heartstrings in just the right way and act as a catalyst for the bonkers second half of the show.
Director Dominique Purdue leans into the play’s chaos with confidence. There’s a sense of controlled anarchy in the staging, as though the production itself is teetering on the edge – mirroring the characters’ psychological descent.
Mia MacCormick’s set and costume design uses the traverse stage to its advantage, giving the actors space to explore while grounding the world in a recognisable reality. Lighting by Caity Cowan is subtle but superb – the green spotlight to represent characters returning to the earth is an inspired choice.
Cameron Smith’s sound design occasionally feels a little overemphasised. While the intention to underscore moments of tension and emotion is clear, it doesn’t always sit comfortably within the action. At times it feels unnecessary, and in others, slightly distracting.
Also, while not a fault of the production itself, the story begins to lose cohesion after the midpoint, following the first death. Emotional investment gives way to a more absurdist tone, and the two don’t always sit comfortably alongside each other. At times, it feels caught between fully embracing its ridiculous premise and committing to the weight of its characters’ actions.
What’s most striking about this show is how it embraces contradiction. It is messy, as promised, and proudly so. It asks impossible questions and offers no neat resolutions. Instead, it finds its centre in something unexpectedly tender: two people clinging to each other in the face of overwhelming uncertainty.
In the end, 3 Billion Seconds is a deeply stimulating portrait of love in the age of the climate crisis. It’s not always comfortable, and that’s precisely the point. This is theatre that provokes, unsettles, and lingers.
3 Billions Seconds is presented by Blinking Light Theatre and runs to 2 May at KXT on Broadway. 181 Broadway, Ultimo NSW 2007.
Tickets: https://events.humanitix.com/3-billions-seconds-kxt26
Website: https://www.kingsxtheatre.com/3-billion-seconds
Socials: https://www.instagram.com/blinkinglight.theatre/ and https://www.instagram.com/kxt_bakehouse/
Photo credits: Phil Erbacher
