Weather Girl positions the titular stereotype as a performance-art allegory for projecting culturally-popular femininity, and for society maintaining a cheery facade as the world approaches the climate brink.

Brian Watkins’ new one-woman play, directed by Tyne Rafaeli at London’s Soho Theatre, imagines a Gen-Z weather girl (Julia McDermott) who is so wedded to this stereotypical persona — as capitalism dictates — that it’s become her permanent personality, even IRL outside the boob tube. She clings to upholding this airy, light, pretty exterior, all while the dark, depressing, truer nature of existence — hers, and Earth’s — bleeds through. She wants to be who her audience wants her to be, on screen and off — an apt metaphor for the social-media age. 

And then Weather Girl’s metaphors transition to being about civilization grasping for superficial prettiness to distract from the mounting evidence that the environment is threatening to wipe us out. Viewers tune in to hear her predict the daily forecast with a smile, even if she’s reporting on disasters that bode cataclysmically for everyone’s long-term. In their eyes, her job is to commit to her sunny appearance, even as the sun figuratively sets on a livable planet — a paradox that rips her apart.

And Weather Girl chronicles her unraveling.