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After The EndThe premise behind 'After The End' is an exercise in Spartan simplicity. A terrorist's 'dirty' nuclear weapon detonates in London and two people sit out the fearful consequences, relatively safe in a purpose built back garden shelter. In Dennis Kelly's scenario, turned into a thriller of a stage play by Director Daniel Clarke, the unthinkable happens, and the audience sits through the aftermath with the actors, wondering how things will work out. Who will - quite literally - survive the fallout. When I wrote 'unthinkable', it was a figure of speech only - for as we discover, both Hannah Norris and I had been in London in July 2005 when the bombs went off across the city. They could so easily have been low yield radioactive weapons... "My character, Louise, is a completely reliant and self-sufficient character, but she comes to after the explosion and she seems to be in this bomb shelter," explains Norris. Louise, it turns out, has been rescued by a work colleague, Mark, played by Nick Pelomas. "It's crazy, but it seems to start like an episode of 'The Odd Couple'," says Pelomas, "then descends into power games, and the use and abuse of power." In a way this leads to the question of whether Louise might have been better off outside the shelter rather than inside? The two aren't telling. "He's an office mate and a bit of a nerd, but he's in love with Louise," explains Pelmas, and Norris takes up the story. "Louise is nice to him in the normal office environment, but he does things she'll never ever do, like play 'Dungeons & Dragons'." In the play, writer Dennis Kelly has his characters working through their feelings and beliefs, including a hefty dose of political discourse, which becomes another source of tension between the two. Says Norris, "Louise has completely differing world views than Mark, and she's headstrong and quick, and can be sharp. She quickly drills holes in his arguments..." Adds Pelomas, "A lot of the humour comes from his inability to function as normal, and to explain his actions. He, for example, is pretty paranoid, and he keeps a fully stocked 1980s bunker in his backyard." "It's so really well written, and there are moments of absolute tension, but it's also really funny - in places. It definitely is a play which asks far more of me, is more demanding both physically and mentally, than anything I've ever approached before," says Norris. "And it seems to constantly duck and weave, to change direction, and force the audience to re-evaluate where they stand in relation to the two performers." Pelomas laughs as he follows the thread: "There are different forms of strength and of power, and that's one of the things that Kelly is exploring. Mark can talk about electromagnetic radiation and bombardment, yet at one point he says naively, 'You can bet whoever did this has got a beard'. In Kelly's script, this is the closest the audience gets to glimpse where Kelly might be coming from, or where the attack comes from. It's not depersonalising the threat, it's underscoring the intensity of the bunker, and perhaps the enormity of their isolation. "Overall, it seems like he's questioning whether violence breeds violence, and that it's easy to have an opinion when it's not being tested," Pelomas points out. "It's an epic! It's just so uncompromising. I've never had to lay so much on the line as an actor." Alex Wheaton |