#No Exemptions, by Angela Buckingham, REVIEW, 6 May 2022 ****

THEATRE Digital

Produced by The Shift Theatre and La Mama Theatre

At La Mama Courthouse, 27 April to 8 May 2022

This review of live stream on 6 May 2022. Digital season to follow.

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

Stars: ****

 This review published only on this blog. KH

L-R: Endrico Botha, Carolyn Bock, Helen Hopkins, Eva Seymour

#No Exemptions written by Angela Buckingham, represents a dystopian world in which all older people – above what age, we do not know – are being rounded up and transported to their death. Scary concept for anyone over, let’s say, 50?

The purge is being imposed in order to conserve water and food and other resources in a world decimated by man-made disasters such as climate change. The invisible architects of this plan have sent young people to do their dirty work. Their reward is rations of food and water and their continuing survival.

 

The production is directed with a deft hand by Susie Dee who, with a capable and committed cast of five, captures the intensity, despair and desperation of Buckingham’s script.

 

The play takes place in and below a housing tower inside which Maria (Helen Hopkins) and her now-mentally unstable former neighbour, Ewa (Carolyn Bock), cower and hide, waiting for Maria’s husband, Paul (Hugh Sexton), to return with food, water and news of a route of escape. Hopeless!

 

As they hunker down in the cage-like room, their nerves are frayed, their tempers volatile and Ewa’s mind is slipping further from reality. Her need for food and addled mind make her unable to comprehend the danger.

 

Zach Endrico Botha and Zola Eva Seymour are two young who are part of ‘the System’ that controls all those being hunted like animals. They are victims of the System but their age gives them some hope of staying alive.

 

It is a bleak scenario that offers no hope of salvation or redemption. Perhaps we need this kind of horror to remind up of the future we are constructing for ourselves and the next generations.

 

By Kate Herbert

Hugh Sexton, Helen Hopkins

 

Written by Angela Buckingham

Directed by Susie Dee

 

Performed by

EWA: Carolyn Bock

ZACH: Endrico Botha

MARIA: Helen Hopkins

PAUL: Hugh Sexton

ZOLA: Eva Seymour

Set and costume design by Sophie Woodward

Lighting design by Gina Gascoigne

Sound design by Ian Moorhead

Stage manager Claire Shepherd

Fight Choreographer Lyndall Grant

Armourer Len Steele

Photography credit Darren Gill