Love and Human Extinction
By Shaista Justin
Presented by Wide Out Loud Productions
Royal St. George’s Auditorium
Thu July 9 @ 4:15pm
Fri July 10 @ 9:15pm
Sat July 11 @ Noon
Tickets are $10 at the door.
Reviewed by Daina Valiulis
Rarely is a production completely good or completely bad, as there are so many different elements that need to come together for a success. The grey area, however, is tricky: sometimes, the successful elements of a production are enough to overwhelm the unsuccessful ones (and vice versa). This is not one of those plays. While some aspects of Love and Human Extinction, a play about the last three people on Earth, work quite well, the parts that don’t suffocate them.
Some interesting ideas are presented at the outset: the characters are dressed as if they’ve been vintage shopping (the costume and set design are quirky and brilliant) and they role play as something to do to eke out their threadbare existences. Bertie (Jennifer Neales) is at first delicate and fragile. When she gets upset, she escapes into a kind of catatonic state and dresses a mannequin in scraps of clothing she has found among the ruins, which is heartbreaking and beautiful.
The second male character, Eliot, enters the scene, and the writing (which has been lyrical and fluid up until now) tragically becomes pedestrian and painfully expositional. From this point forward, the play’s momentum screeches to a halt and the characters contemplate their existence at the audience, talking about what they lost in the apocalypse. The acting becomes irritatingly overwrought and, as such, it’s harder to empathize with the characters. The sad violin music that cuts in every time someone is having a deeply “profound” moment is no help. It only worsens the melodrama.
This is one apocalypse story you can afford to miss, which is unfortunate due to the promising design and writing elements.
