#NOEXEMPTIONS

In a dim-lit bare space suggested only by outlines of green neon, a haggard woman, Maria (Helen Hopkins) stares out a window, scanning the street below.  She’s dressed in rags.  More rags litter the floor, all that’s left in what we realise is a high-rise apartment.  Another woman, Ewa (Carolyn Bock), also in rags, her hair an angry cloud, crawls in from the loo, on her hands and knees.  Once perhaps a beauty, now, somehow, she reminds us of a dog – a weakened, hungry dog.  She whines and wheedles.  She still has her red kitten heels – as if that will help.  She tries and fails to snatch a shoebox size tin; there’s food in there.  Maria’s husband should be back, but he’s not.  Maria denies she’s watching out for him.  Intermittently, a frightening warning buzzer sounds and there are announcements made in three or four languages: everyone is to get out – and there are ‘no exemptions’.  We realise now – if we had not already – that this is the future.

Meanwhile, in the street below, there’s some kind of patrol – an uncertain young man, Zach (Endrico Botha), a nice boy once, and a girl, Zola (Eva Seymour) a feral street survivor.  They bicker over who’s in charge and who should have their single semi-automatic weapon – which is broken anyway.  Zola wants the gun, so she can do her job.  Their mission is to clear the apartment block and get the inhabitants onto waiting buses.  No destination is specified…  Throughout, Ian Moorhead’s sound design is of some inexorable grinding industrial process reminding us that there’s nothing but destruction left.

Maria and Ewa fight – physically fight – over the food.  It’s primal and horrible: two middle-aged women writhing, punching, choking amidst the rags.  Fierce Maria knocks weakened Ewa unconscious.  Maria’s husband Paul (Hugh Sexton) finally returns.  He’s horrified but physically and morally debilitated; he worries about their son…  Has it come to this?  What have they done?  What didn’t they do?  And then Zola appears, with the gun.

In her program note, playwright Angela Buckingham says that director Susie Dee ‘has stripped out all distraction, diversion and sentiment from this story… of the extremity of life that lies in wait.’  And indeed, Susie Dee’s highly skilled, detailed direction makes this stark tale even starker – as does Sophie Woodward’s set design and costumes.  There is no softening here. There’s a brutality in the sharp movements of these human beings so reduced by hunger, fear, and despair.  Zach, waiting in the street, at least has a role - if temporary: clearly there is no future.  Eva Seymour, as Zach’s offsider Zola, is particularly disturbing: she’s a frightening little engine, grinning when she gets that gun, flickering with the evil of a being devoid of conscience.

Playwright Angela Buckingham says her play is ‘about the end of the world’ – and it is - and, as the title states, there will be no exemptions.  The play is a no excuses warning – and it especially emphasises the responsibility of the Boomers – and Gen X, and Gen Y – for the kind of world we and they will leave for our children – a world in which nothing’s left, in which old friends fight to the death over a biscuit and a sip of water - and there are doomed creatures like Zola, with guns. 

So why see this bleak, black dystopian vision – this moral warning slap in the face?  Because this is no mere ‘ain’t it awful’ snivel in a wet hankie.  It tells us that this is where the world is going unless…  We know what to do.  But if we do nothing, this is what we’ll leave behind. 

As a play, #NOEXEMPTIONS is powerful theatre.  It’s a gripping thriller in which tension is sustained all the way.  Its world is not neatly ‘explained’ – but with growing horror we work it out.  The writing is enigmatic but direct, forceful but eloquent.  The performances are no-frills and uncompromising, the characters utterly defined by their irrevocable predicament. 

On my night – in the second week - the show was sold out – and the audience looked to be mostly middle-aged.  Had they come to be warned?  Buckingham and Dee no doubt hope so.

Michael Brindley

Photographer: Darren Gill