An interesting premise – with sadly, an absence of anything new to say
Absence of Youth is a short 45-minute play, centring on five characters who have been thrown together in the wake of a zombie apocalypse, who all have a different experience of surviving in this new world. The show opens on a simple but well-chosen set, table and chairs, blankets and wooden boards to close up the windows; classic hallmarks of zombie apocalypse media. The show utilises an audio track to provide the premise for the zombie outbreak and then we are quickly introduced to the characters who have lost their friend in an attack and picked up a mysterious, injured stranger whom they aren’t sure whether or not to trust.
From the outset, and the marketing, I expected a tense, poignant play drawing parallels with lost youth of Covid and what it means to grow up in a constant state of fear. However, sadly this isn’t what an Absence of Youth offers in the end. As the play progressed, cracks started to appear and it ultimately led it to a rather lacklustre finale, which left the audience with more questions than answers.
The main flaw of the play is that it lacks something new to say. In a time when we have an oversaturated zombie apocalypse media landscape, The Last of Us, 28 Years Later, we’ve been inundated with these stories and so, if you want to use zombies you need a compelling reason to do so. Absence of Youth lacks this, and although there are moments you can see it trying, it falters and never manages to stick the landing. The use of the tennis ball, green, luminous, with a smiley face as a symbol of their lost youth, is strong at a point, but is then quickly lost and moved on from. The age of the characters is never made clear, nor how long the outbreak has been going on, so whether their youth has truly been lost isn’t obvious.
The other problem is the pacing. 45 minutes should feel really tight and like every second of dialogue is being used well, but we seemed to fly past interesting things and linger on moments that didn’t add to the story such as sleeping or lighting a fire. The character of Alex, who disappears at the start of the play, and the acting here by Arinze Eke is a real delight, but we don’t have a chance to get to know him before his departure or understand the history behind his mental torment.
The play attempts to find conflict between the characters of Sarah and Henry, who have had different experiences of the outbreak, but this never feels sincere or tense enough as we don’t get into the real weeds of the character dynamics and how the have-nots experienced the outbreak. It unfortunately feels rushed and underdeveloped.
This isn’t to say the show is without merit. There are some really lovely moments between characters, especially when they interact with the minimal set dressing pieces such as the fire, and the aforementioned tennis ball. However, there aren’t enough of them to make us care about these characters, which ultimately means the climax of the show, which should be a dramatic shooting, doesn’t land. With some work on the script, there could be something here, but sadly, it’s just absent, as yet.