AFTER THE END. To 8 October.

London

AFTER THE END
by Dennis Kelly

Bush Theatre To 8 October 2005
Mon-Sat 8pm
Runs 1hr 40min No interval

TICKETS: 020 7610 4224
www.bushtheatre.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 19 September

Fallout shelter become hell-hole in games-playing drama.In the 1960s John Bowen wrote a post-nuclear play called After the Rain and John Fowles a compulsive novel about a man who kidnapped a beautiful young woman, The Collector (also adapted for the stage). Though Dennis Kelly's new play (produced at the Bush by Paines Plough Theatre Company) has its own definite voice, and is very much of today, it veers between these 2 situations. Only at the end does what's been happening in After the End become clear.

By then claustrophobia's been introduced into Miriam Buether's gleaming tubular-section set, a nuclear fallout shelter progressively littered by empty cans and implements as its owner Mark and the fellow-worker he's apparently rescued from a terrorist's suitcase bomb, define their increasingly messy relationship in what becomes a study of power and personality.

She's a social success, he's the office nerd, and knows it. Tom Brooke the thin man's answer to Simon Russell Beale, defining roles in terms of his distinct stage presence has the persistent intensity of the underdog, watching each situation for a chance to impress. Brooke makes it clear why Mark has to retreat from the world with a woman he'd have no chance with normally.

Nor does he in this abnormal situation - Mark represents the conundrum that the most unlovable feel the demands of love; or, they feel desire which so easily presents itself as love. The more assertive he becomes, the more he humiliates himself. Sex and violence grow closer till the knife Louise grasps becomes counter-weapon to Mark's phallic urges. In the survival game she turns out smarter than him too.

Earlier, Kerry Condon's had a natural ease, disturbed only when alarm signals call to her from Mark's behaviour; Louise has never had to make an effort to try for social status. Roxana Silbert's production keeps the pace steady, steering through the situation, allowing rare moments of unforced humour and marking out Louise's crucial discovery with the intensity of silence.

Kelly's play pointedly shows how the stratagems of the weak implode to reveal their originators' inadequacies in a generation for which self-assertion has become a self-conscious way of behaviour.

Mark: Tom Brooke
Louise: Kerry Condon

Director: Roxana Silbert
Designer: Miriam Buether
Lighting: Chahine Yavroyan
Sound: Matt McKenzie
Assistant director: George Perrin

2005-09-20 12:59:43