The play’s premise, at least at first glance, signals a work of unusual scale and intent. In the year 2030, the global population, faced with catastrophic environmental collapse, is placed into a state of suspended animation for one year by a newfangled anaesthetic gas known as 54E–501E. Superseding earlier plans to relocate humanity to Mars, this period of hibernation – masterminded by, of all people, an Australian politician called Warwick Joyce (Mark Saturno) and his staffer Emily Metcalfe (Ansuya Nathan), whose ideas he chauvinistically passes off as his own – is intended to bring emissions down and allow time for the planet to recover. The play gives broad sweep to this unlikely scenario, taking in the political machinations that produced it and sketching the lives of ordinary families in Lagos, Bogota, and Adelaide as they prepare for, undergo, and then emerge from twelve months of enforced sleep (for all its invention, the play hangs on a pretty conventional three-act structure – before, during, and after).

Being an initiative of the Australian government, hibernation predictably does not go to plan. Adelaideans Maggie (Elizabeth Hay) and Pete (James Smith) are unaffected by the gas, for reasons that are gradually revealed (but somehow weren’t foreseen); they find each other amid the vaguely post-apocalyptic landscape of a hibernating CBD. Over warm beers they trade stories of looting and scavenging, and marvel at various animals’ reclamation of city spaces like the Adelaide Oval. In a lengthy monologue – easily the best and most affecting of Kruckemeyer’s writing here, and mesmerisingly performed by Hay – Maggie tearfully recounts how she accidentally started a fire that razed several blocks on South Terrace and must have killed dozens, despite her efforts to drag several sleeping people to safety. Unfortunately, though, it’s only during this second act, bracketed by tiresome chunks of exposition in the first and third, that the play really comes to life, energised by something much more heartfelt and human.

Elizabeth Hay and James Smith in Hibernation (photograph by Chris Herzfeld)

The story of a global shutdown, conceived pre-pandemic, could hardly be more resonant at a time when the majority of Australia’s population is subject to stay-at-home orders. With its scenes of domestic isolation and nods to an anti-lockdown-like movement, the play certainly opens the door to some interesting parallels with a world more than a year and a half into a global pandemic. The suspension of disbelief required to be convinced by any of this was, however, beyond me. Kruckemeyer writes mostly for young audiences, and there is a kind of childlike logic to Hibernation. Its antecedents are Snow White, Doctor Who – diehard fans will immediately think of, as I did, the plot of 1974’s Invasion of the Dinosaurs – and H.G. Wells’s The Sleeper Awakes (1910).

As the play wears on, the implausibilities and coincidences overwhelm any chance of accepting the play as a whimsical thought experiment rather than as a piece of hard, socially conscious sci-fi. Though I admire Kruckemeyer’s optimism, it’s difficult to believe that a near-global consensus could be reached to embark on such a radically interventionist policy so quickly (and before we’ve even banned petrol-driven cars too!). The shutdown itself raises endless practical questions, and the web of connections spun between characters in the third act stretches credulity even further.

Perhaps, if it had been clearer to me what the point of it all was, I might have been able to write off this conceptual looseness as poetic licence (Kruckemeyer is nothing if not an unashamedly lyrical writer, especially when it comes to dialogue). As it is, I wasn’t sure what I was being asked to think about – fatal, surely, in a ‘play of ideas’ – and the dramaturgy never coheres to a point where the relationship of the characters to one another or the world they inhabit ought to illuminate this. Scenes come and go, largely free from the conflict and struggle necessary to drive compelling drama, and there’s never a sense of momentum, of the constituent parts building towards anything more substantial. At a critical moment in the climate crisis when governments are continuing to fail us, it’s a little galling, too, that the play doesn’t even gesture at the possibility of collective action in the face of environmental breakdown, characterising the world’s population as either compliant or conspiratorial.

Kialea Nadine Williams and Rashidi Edward in Hibernation (photograph by Matt Byrne)

The play is fortunate to be elevated in its première by a fine production directed by State Theatre Company Artistic Director Mitchell Butel. Comprising Saturno, Nathan, Hay, and Smith, as well as Chris Asimos, Rosalba Clemente, Rashidi Edward, Ezra Juanta, Kialea-Nadine Williams, and the alternating child actors Poppy Kelly and Eva Hinde, the ensemble, bar one or two shaky accents, is uniformly strong. Jonathan Oxlade’s set, an enclosed, antiseptic white space containing a large circular cut-out at the back for Matt Byrne’s occasional video projections, is satisfyingly minimalist, and makes an excellent canvas for Gavin Norris’s vibrant, pastel-toned lighting. Andrew Howard’s string- and piano-drenched sound design, incorporating familiar neoclassical pieces by Ludovico Einaudi and Jóhann Jóhannsson, is effective without being overly sentimental.

At a time when, like many, I find myself craving art equal to the formidableness of the problems we face, Hibernation feels like a major disappointment. Further development may rectify at least some of its weaknesses, but for now, at least, Kruckemeyer’s reach, laudably extended though it is, has exceeded his grasp.

Hibernation, produced by the State Theatre Company South Australia, is showing at the Dunstan Playhouse from 13 to 28 August 2021. Performance attended: August 17.