Certain Death and Other Considerations
Aug 10-13, 15-20, 22-27 - Zoo Playground The world will end in exactly 80 years – just enough time to have a baby! This devised dark comedy follows two couples (and a surrogate) as they prepare to welcome new life into a dying world. With doomsday just outside of their natural lifespan, certain death is close enough to inform every decision, but far enough away to ignore in a pinch. What would you do if the world was going to end in eighty years? The reality is that your life is likely going to end in 80 years, yet you carry on living it, starting families, falling in love, and going to work. However, for an unknown reason, in eighty years, the world within this play will end, and everyone is aware of the ticking clock. Evoking the best of something like Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men, where mankind could no longer have children and we saw how society fell apart, Certain Death... focuses on the macro of the type of conversations regular people would have when the end of the world is far enough on the horizon that you are unlikely to see the end but your next generation might. The play is labelled as a drama and dark comedy, but it reminds me of the best science fiction in the type of conversations it provokes in you as an audience when you walk out of the safe space of a theatre. The reality of our own world is damning already, with many debating if they should be having children in a world of global boiling, rampant inequality, and bringing children into a world where they're going to be even worse off than the current generation, and that's a sorry state too. What makes the play work so well is these conversations among friends, partners, and a surrogate parent, focusing on their day-to-day lives and personal drama that many can relate to and wouldn't look out of place in countless other festival shows, except that these are heightened by the impending doom that their world will end. The anxiety that looming doomsday brings, which manifests itself on stage as a dominating digital clock, adds to the sense of urgency in every conversation, choice, and fear felt by our characters. The ticking clock already applies to us all, and perhaps we too should learn to embrace those awkward conversations, swallow those bitter pills, and take those big swings that could bring us happiness too. Don't let your time run out by missing this show. 4/5 Book your tickets here > https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/certain-death-and-other-considerations Lee Hutchison |