SYDNEY is flooded. A climatologist feels guilty and anxious that he failed to predict the rising tide, having allowed realpolitik to drown his science.

This is Between Two Waves, Australia’s contribution to the theatre of climate change, written by and starring the actor Ian Meadows, who portrays Daniel, a Sydney climate scientist turned policy adviser awash in his home town, the Marrickville-Cooks River district.

Emotional struggles ... Ash Ricardo and Ian Meadows. Credit:Tamara Dean

But does theatre on global warming succeed, or does the message overwhelm the medium?

Meadows, who started work on the script as a feature film, says: ‘‘I wanted to deal with [climate change] in a way that wasn’t didactic, that didn’t get bogged down in the science necessarily, or too much in policy, but deal with it at a personal and emotional level.’’