A queer coming to the end of the world
When the world comes to a cataclysmic end, what can you possibly say to your best friend?
Seconds to Midnight, a new play debuting at Bunker One at the Pleasance Courtyard and produced by Love Songs Productions, is a queer couch drama set at the end of days. Written by Jessica Tabraham and directed by Matilda Piovella and Katie Kirkpatrick, this two-hander is introspective and endlessly pondering.
After an announcement that their location will be hit by nuclear armaments in seven hours, Jo, played by Elise Busset, and Eddie, played by Cosimo Asvisio, while away their final moments together in their shared living room. Upon entering the space, we find the two paying uno and are invited to write out our own confessions to our best friends on post-it notes and stick them up on the back wall of the stage, placing the audience into the mindsets of the characters.
Jo and Eddie once almost hooked up, before either knew that the other was gay, and this fact holds a shadow across their relationship. In their final moments, they reminisce, drink and try not to argue, though grievances well to the surface. The promise of the play is highly intriguing, but is not explored in enough depth. The characters, although well sketched out, feel too far away and the problems that they have with each other are argued in circles, never coming to land on anything solid.
Although a play with a fun conceit, Seconds to Midnight is a fun but rambling drama.