3 Billion Seconds (KXT on Broadway) ★★★½

Written by Maud Dromgoole. Blinking Light in association with Bakehouse Theatre Company. KXT on Broadway. 17 Apr – 2 May, 2026.

How far would you go to live an ecologically ethical life? British playwright Maud Dromgoole has fun with the hypocritically idealistic fringe-left and the psychotic devotion of parents-to-be in the reality-stretching 3 Billion Seconds.

Daisy (Izabella Louk) and Michael (Victor Y Z Xu) are having a baby. In their eyes, this is a bad thing. They’re both population activists, and bringing a baby into the world is a big commitment — not to mention a huge carbon footprint. So to justify bringing a new human, who will spend the next 90 years consuming resources, into this world, they set about trying to balance the cosmic scales, banking their own extreme version of “carbon credits” to put themselves in the moral black.

What starts as a college rom-com of two young, politically active performers trying to change the world one community hall at a time pushes itself into a manic state. The title, 3 Billion Seconds, refers to the estimated total lifespan of a person born today. So to offset the impending carbon debt of their unborn child, Daisy and Michael need to bank an equal number of credits in advance — more than they can manage by simply reducing their personal output. About halfway through, they start making increasingly extreme choices to hit their goal.

The mid-show pivot, which comes out of the blue, threatens to derail the evening. It lacks set-up, but it pushes the show into fun new territory. Once you simply accept it, 3 Billion Seconds becomes a high-concept black comedy — think 90s indie films like The Last Supper or Shallow Grave. If you’re the kind of Marvel movie fan who thought “Thanos has a point” – you’ll enjoy playing in this moral grey space.

Both Louk and Xu play their roles large to meet the tone, addressing the audience in synchronised narration. Thankfully, both performers have a charm that breaks through some of the more artificial set-ups, giving their angst — if not a convincing natural grounding, then at least a nod in the direction of real human behaviour.

Director Dominique Purdue (recently seen performing in Perfect Arrangement at New Theatre) primes us for the increasingly incredulous turns by placing the show in a heightened, abstract space. Mia MacCormick’s set — a sandpit with half-buried furniture, like the inside of an hourglass with grains of sand slipping away — is given real versatility by sharp lighting and omnipresent sound cues (lights: Caity Cowan; sound: Cameron Smith). It’s an exciting directorial debut, full of vision and invention. A tighter grasp on the script’s comedic timing would heighten it further, but on the whole it shows an abundance of promise.

Dromgoole’s script — funny, outrageous, and pointed in its critiques — fights against itself to tell an equally entertaining story. The more it leans into magical realism, the harder it is to trust its ecological facts. It’s hard to know where the exaggerations begin or end, meaning the play’s good intentions get lost in the mix of laughs and shocks.

While its satire has a somewhat blunt edge, 3 Billion Seconds is a fun, engaging, and wildly entertaining look at the impossible task of living an ethical life in the modern world. It’s well worth spending around 5 thousand seconds — that’s just under 90 minutes — in the theatre watching it.