After the End – Review

As the light faded in on this studio production, you couldn’t help be struck by the austerity of the evocative set; a simple curved sheet of corrugated iron, sheltering a long ledge which itself guarded a few survival necessities. The actors sat, knees to their chins, staring through the imagined fourth wall, waiting for a sound or sign that something, someone, anyone was living 20 feet above the earth that covered their shelter. This wasn’t a mock-up of a 40’s air raid shelter, but a nuclear bunker forcing the message home that this bleak world could one day be ours.

The script has a political agenda; but it is also has a stimulating and emotional storyline, engaging the audience in its dramatic twists and turns, and exploding with dark humor, sexual violence, anger, and desire. In seconds, laughter could trail into a stunned silence, as an unexpected development unfurled before us. Skillful production elements and intelligent performances worked in an ironic harmony to ensure that we were able to ruminate on the heavy thematic relevance of this production.

By means of a précis, Mark and Louise (played by Madeleine Joseph and Dan Gingel) are survivors of a terrorist attack which has destroyed everything they know. Forced into a tiny nuclear bunker, their incompatible personalities inevitably clash – mirroring, perhaps, the clash of political ideologies which have catalyzed their predicament.

As everything above them is annihilated, buildings and people reduced to atoms, inside the bunker we learn of individual atomization; an ability to convey our emotional needs in an increasingly materialistic world. Mark is desperate for Louise’s love, anybody’s love, and becomes ruthless in the pursuit of his needs; inflicting a harm that will never heal or be forgotten.

On another level, when Louise refuses to engage with Mark during a game of Dungeons and Dragons, declines to indulge him in his fantasy role-play constrained to a set of rules he believes in, he denies her food and bombards her with threats. Refusal to engage with power equals suffering; this surely then transcends the boundaries of personal politics, bringing today’s international relations into a sharp focus, leaving us with something to think about as the characters suffocate in each other’s company and under the strain of the atomized remains lying above them.