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Theater can do a lot of things people. It can open up their minds to new ideas, make them re-examine their views of society and the individual, and bring uncomfortable truths to light.
It can also seriously creep them out.
The Contemporary Theater's spring show, After the End, did all of these things and more. After the End, written by British playwright Dennis Kelly and directed by Daniel DeStefano, A&S '07, was performed this past weekend in the Bonn Studio Theater. The play runs for about an hour and a half, without an intermission, and its only two characters remain onstage for almost the entire time. This is a show that is not for the meek of heart.
After the End takes place in a Cold War bomb shelter during the present day. Set designer Onalee Rivera, A&S '07, created the shelter by building two walls and then having the audience make up the additional two walls. The audience members, being emersed in the play, were unable to distance themselves from the performance. The flickering fluorescent lights and drab gray walls resembled a prison, reinforcing the trapped atmosphere of the play.
The show's premise is as unique as its set. Terrorists have just set off a nuclear bomb and two young co-workers, Mark, played by Alex Hadshi, A&S '09, and Louise played by Megan Green, CSON '07, have managed to make it to the relative safety of Mark's bomb shelter. Louise is the kind of girl that everyone wants to be friends with; charismatic, pretty, and intelligent, while Mark is that slightly off kid that everyone wishes would stay very far away from them. While Louise can mesh well with others, Mark just doesn't seem to understand that his appearance, his rhetoric, and many of his opinions label him as a "freak." While these two inhabit the same confined quarters with very few supplies, they are forced to deal with their fears and each other.
There were many innovative and exciting things about this play, one of them being its natural language. Too often in the theater we hear characters spouting off monologues that are supposed to sound normal but come off as scripted and unnatural. The dialogue in After the End was anything but. With its generous use of swear words, overlapping conversations, and awkward exchanges, the characters feel authentic without becoming dull. Believing that these two characters could exist is essential to this play; without believing that people are capable of committing the horrible acts that both Mark and Louise commit, the play would lose much of its disturbing value. The one flaw in an otherwise brilliant script is the foul language - it is used a little too much so that its effect slowly begins to wear off as the play continues.
The language might have been a bit much, and many might have thought that the "mature material" in the play was too disturbing and unnecessary. DeStefano, originally slated to do the equally disturbing Pillowman, took an incredible risk in choosing this play to Some parts were so upsetting that many of the audience members' hands crept up toward their faces in an attempt to shield themselves from the very graphic material in front of them. While difficult to watch, it was important that the show break down the standards of what is acceptable. The explicit and often violent scenes grabbed the audiences' attention and forced them to witness the psychological and social implications. The polite relationship that Mark and Louise previously enjoyed disappears without a society to keep them in check. The resulting power struggle between the two of them parallels their descent into brutal and barbaric behavior.
Both Green and Hadshi portrayed impressive concentration and commitment to their roles; they performed incredibly difficult material for the entirety of the show. Hadshi did a good job of portraying his character as not just a sketchy guy the audience immediately rejects but as one who deserves our pity until the end. Green skillfully took the audience on her terrifying journey as harsh realities about both Louise and Mark come to light. With a game of Dungeons and Dragons, scenes of masturbation, and a terrible dark secret, After the End was a loaded performance that left its audience dazed, shocked, and perhaps a little more open to pushing boundaries of their own.
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