Summary
This dark comedy centers on a seemingly polished weather girl at a small California television station whose life spirals into a spectacular catastrophe after she is assigned to cover a tragic house fire. As she reports on wildfires and indulges in a life of prosecco and teeth whitening, her unraveling leads to a discovery that could potentially save everyone.
Saturday, October 4, 2025 Oct 4, 2025
Stacey’s a weather girl; she puts on a polished face and presents the forecast on the local news. And Stacey is “Weather Girl”—a manifestation of the weather and the child of Mother Earth. Stacey’s worsening addiction is an elaborate metaphor for the increasingly volatile climate. Both she and the planet are in vicious, self-reinforcing spirals toward points of no return, with seemingly nobody willing to intervene in their respective crises.
People have been telling her that she was destined for TV since she was a kid; on any given day, Stacey’s lacquered up, squeezed into shapewear, and flashing the pearly whites. Her looks mask the fact that she’s going off the rails: drinking on the job and in the car, chewing out her boss, threatening some people and endangering others. She shows all kinds of warning signs that other people should see—but they don’t, or they won’t, or they don’t want her to be their responsibility. And so, too, our planet remains capable of dramatic beauty, even as the global temperature statistics are damning and we’re roiled by violent weather. Years-long geological change is easy to ignore, especially if you don’t want to rein in a lifestyle of abundance, and we still get distractingly beautiful days and scenic vistas.
The extra wrinkle for Stacey is that the two problems are interconnected. She’s certainly not the only one in existential stress about the future of the planet, but as a weather reporter, she has an especially vivid understanding of how dire the situation is and an outsized platform from which she can influence it. The feedback loop between her worsening health and the planet’s is unusually strong, and it emphasizes the interconnectedness of Earth and its inhabitants. We’re all part of the unsustainable cycle. Somewhere in there, Stacey also visits her mother and discovers her latent (and weakening) ability to conjure water. I’m not kidding, y’all. She’s literally the weather.
The message du jour is sort of a privileged person’s argument for climate action. Don’t we—especially the tech oligarchs in Northern California—have enough good things already? Isn’t it short-sighted to continue thinking about the Earth as a resource to use, rather than a gift to preserve? What if the weather has something to say about it?
Julia McDermott is pretty fabulous in this. She has a gift for modifying her voice for subtext—she does the forecast in the sugary presenter voice, which descends over the course of the show into unhingedness. She also flexes into “man voice” for supporting characters, among other highlights. She has the perfect look and sound for this character and infuses the 75-minute monologue with a necessary manic energy. I like how they abruptly flip the direction of the lights on her face between scenes. She just feels ready to explode.
It’s a nice piece. The analogy between addiction and climate change makes a surprising amount of sense and the play spends a lot of time developing the details there. (For instance, the mother—Mother Earth—is homeless and especially vulnerable to the elements. The planet doesn’t have the good fortune of retreating under a roof. Lots of things like that.) I wonder, though, if the detail lavished on the analogy makes it outshine the story it’s supposed to serve? It feels like it comes at the expense of a clear resolution for Stacey and a well-conveyed message. A little too academic, maybe?