REVIEW: The Apocalypse Bear Trilogy at Brockley Jack 11-22 July

‘a vision of the world in which nothing gets better, only more itself’ ★★★ ½

‘Teasing’ is how the characters in the third subsection of this play by Australian-American playwright Lally Katz describe the flickering of fluorescent lights, and the flickering light is an image that the play itself seems to suggest for understanding its method and its raison d’être. The eponymous Apocalypse Bear, too, seems to enjoy teasing people. Though what he wants out of them (to frighten them? To play? To punish them on a cosmic level?) is as teasingly withheld as anything else in this play. Teasing on a structural level, the play shows us the Apocalypse Bear bursting in to three seemingly unconnected vignettes. These were increasingly successful.

The first one, about a self-centred teenager with a supposedly suicidal internet friend, felt unfocused and the characters underdeveloped, whereas the second one, about a schoolgirl who was maybe also a time-travelling divorcee, was intriguingly odd, and the final one, an awkward bedtime interaction between a couple whose relationship was clearly on the rocks, was grippingly cringe-inducing. These vignettes are potentially interconnected - are these the same characters at different points of their lives? - but the most puzzling and clearest interconnection is that of the interloping bear. What is the bear actually doing here? If the bear wants to play, it’s a rough kind of play that crosses the line between real life and fantasy in ways that rapidly become unsafe. But he seems to have no other discernible goal, except to trouble the characters and force them to confront their unhappiness. This play’s obtuseness is deliberate, and the fact that it doesn’t go anywhere is maybe the most depressing thing of all in a litany of depressing statements and situations. It presents a vision of the world in which nothing gets better, only more itself, and not even the apocalypse will change anything. The revelation (the etymological sense of “apocalypse”) is not a promised end but a kind of tragic recognition of one’s situation, a stripping away of illusions.

        The high point was the narration of a dream in the final section, a rare moment of connection in which Siddy Holloway’s Sonya and Gassan Abdulrazek’s Jeremy (both excellent, as were Remi King as the bear and Benjamin Peterson as a postman) seemed able to finally relate to one another in a genuine way over the sharing of a nightmare – a vision of storytelling as a way to bring people together, to create something good out of the depiction of suffering. But is that what the play itself is doing? I kept waiting for a lightbulb moment in which everything made sense but that’s not the way this play works. It flickers teasingly instead, threatening at every moment to plunge you into darkness. Look, it worked – I feel depressed just thinking about it – but I don’t know what to do with that sadness, absent any kind of hope for change. I guess I need a bear of my own to come help me process it.

Photographer credit is Ben Wilkin

The Apocalypse Bear Trilogy, written by Lally Katz, Brockley Jack, 11-22 July, presented by No Such Theatre, https://brockleyjack.co.uk/jackstudio-entry/the-apocalypse-bear-trilogy/

directed by James Christensen

associate direction by Benjamin Peterson

presented by No Such Theatre

produced by Carrie Croft

Cast:

Siddy Holloway – Sonya

Gassan Abdulrazek – Jeremy

Remi King – The Apocalypse Bear

Benjamin Peterson – Postman

Reviewer Clio Doyle is a playwright and university lecturer.