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The production, imported from London’s Royal Court Theatre with its superb three-member cast – Francesca Annis, Ron Cook and Deborah Findlay – and its director, James MacDonald, intact, is a bold and admirable choice for Manhattan Theatre Club’s Broadway venue, the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. It is particularly daring as a holiday-time offering: If you’re looking for a treat for, um, the children, “The Children” may not be the perfect theatrical stocking-stuffer.

All three actors are in top form, portraying well-developed, multidimensional characters (as well they should, having inhabited them for more than a year) under James Macdonald’s meticulous direction. Beyond the environmental crisis, of course, they capture the more human side of the drama, as the characters struggle with the frustrating realities of their situation — intermittent power outages, undrinkable water, limited food supply, all played out on Miriam Buether’s gently tilting set — a not so subtle suggestion that the world’s gone askew. “I don’t know how to want less,” Hazel says at one point.

That swirling unknown is bought startlingly to life at the end of the play, in one of the most visually stunning denouements on Broadway right now. And the true test of sitting and watching a play with no intermission for close to two hours is that you want to follow Hazel, Rose, and Robin to where they are going, to listen to them more. But Kirkwood has imagined the right end for them, right before a far more profound end presents itself.