The Carbon Neutral Adventures of the Indefatigable Enviroteens, a carbon-neutral production based on First Dog’s bestselling book of the same name, follows young superheroes who must overcome obstacles to save the planet. It’s a bit like a comedic Captain Planet for our times, but with more anthropomorphised objects, more marsupials and many more googly eyes. Aimed at school kids and families, it’s also about friendship and working together to get really hard jobs done.
“It’s got such strong dialogue we were thinking ‘it’s almost like a play already’,” he says. “I enjoyed it so much as a parent, and my daughter enjoyed it so much, which is First Dog’s whole idea – to create something that brings generations together in conversation around the issue of climate change. We just thought, ‘Oh, this is going to be easy!’”
“I had to suffer the agonies of tearing the book to pieces and ruining, RUINING THE WHOLE THING!” Marlton cries. “Leaving just a bloodied stump of a narrative for these people to then go on and mangle even further!” It was tough for Marlton, who had never written a play before. “Ben said ‘well, you just take out all the stuff that isn’t talking’, which is a good place to start … but I put a lot of words into things. Then to really reduce it to find the essence of what I wanted to say but also make it hang together, it’s a very different, difficult way of working.”