WHAT would you do if the world was coming to an end?
That’s the question being posed in John Morton’s Denouement which is currently playing at the Lyric Theatre. Set in 2048 as Armageddon approaches, Liam (Patrick O'Kane) and Edel (Anna Healy) are living out their final hours, cut off from friends and family in a remote Irish farmhouse.
While Edel tries frantically to make contact with her son and daughter, who no longer live in Ireland, Liam is rattling out his memoirs on an old clapped out typewriter. The noise from the machine is deafening at times. Edel asks him why he isn’t using a computer. Technology, he says, “isn’t worth a tuppenny fuck anymore". It’s been down for weeks, he adds. He wants to leave behind a hard copy of his life. With the technology that we’re so used to no longer working you’re left to ponder if it played a part in the coming doom.
In the cottage are shelves containing books and boxes – the detritus of life that we collect – and several flickering TV sets giving us glimpses of dystopian images of a world that’s falling in on itself. Outside of their cottage the trees sweep to-and-fro as loud explosions intermittently scrape across the night sky and land with a thud in the auditorium.
And amongst the sheer dread of what is likely to come the couple try to take the fear out of the fate that is closing in on them. A line of coke here, a swig of whiskey there. Firing on the tunes for a final boogie; calling up old friends to bid a last goodbye; conversations where indiscretions from younger years are freely admitted now that there are no consequences to face. Truths closer to home, however, are more difficult to ignore.
Patrick O’Kane and Anna Healy have a real chemistry on stage. They make for a believable couple who have shared experiences over many years. Getting on each other’s nerves, sometimes it’s difficult to see where the bickering ends and the joking begins. But still Liam rattles away on the typewriter, annoying Edel with queries about their past. And you’re constantly wondering that with the world coming to an end, what is he writing for? Who is he writing to?
Liam and Edel come to terms with their fate
There are moments of dark humour in the play and funny exchanges between the couple, but it is a deeply unsettling tale that pins you to the back of your seat as you can’t help but envisage yourself in their situation and wondering how you would react.
Cleverly written, such a scenario doesn’t seem as far-fetched now as it used to be with recent memory of the Covid lockdowns; concerns over a not-too-distant future dominated by AI; and the sci-fi wastelands left behind by modern warfare which are live-streamed on to our phones.
But when it's all stripped back Denouement is a story about love and relationships. Sometimes it takes the end of the world for us to realise what’s important.
Denouement runs until November 15. Tickets available here.
