Denouement – fighting and flirting at the end of the world (Lyric Theatre until Saturday 15 November) #BIAF25

I’ve sat through the end of the world at least once before in the Lyric Theatre. A few months shy of my tenth birthday, I was taken to watch the stage version of Raymond Briggs’ When the Wind Blows. It’s a moving piece of theatre about an old couple who are suffering from increasing radiation sickness and are totally naïve about the nuclear war.

John Morton’s Denouement also watches a couple come to terms with the end of the world. This time they’re quite informed about what’s happening on the outside but turn out to be totally naïve about each other. They’re anything but intimate in how they address each other and behave. There’s a war at home as well as outside.

It’s 2048 and somewhere in rural Ireland the local nuclear reactor is on its last legs. Books and decades of ephemera are dotted across two walls of dark shelving of a farmhouse, with flickering TV screens bringing voiceless live reports from Belfast and Ballymena, a countdown that looks terminal (irritatingly it resets every ten minutes), along with computer warning messages. Far away explosions cause the one overhead light to shake. The floating floor of Maree Kearns’ set appears to crumple over the edge of the stage and into the audience: the world is on the precipice of disappearing.

Having weathered the storms of parenthood and an affair, Emer and Liam are facing oblivion with a lot left unsaid. Edel copes by reaching out to family, friends, faith … and the last bottle of alcohol in the house. Her desk in the kitchen/living room is filled with electronic devices to connect her to faraway people who she feels can provide her with the solace her husband across the room is not capable of offering. Behind her are family photographs. Liam is processing his looming impermanence by sitting at his table, battering away at a manual typewriter, racing to finish writing up his memoires.

“If life has taught me anything: finish your memoires before the f***ing apocalypse.”

The couple’s world keeps shrinking as north America “drops off the grid” and last-minute phone calls are cut off. Anna Healy and Patrick O’Kane portray a wife and husband who are neither at peace with themselves nor each other. They bicker incessantly. Over 90 minutes (no internal) they talk about tidying up loose ends, but there are so many to choose from. Eventually the tea is spilt on secrets they have long carried and truths they have kept hidden. Edel suggests Liam is “afflicted by nostalgia”. But as she stares into her own last moments, her heart also opens up to missed opportunities. They have come a long way from cosy nights out in the pub and chips eaten on the way home.

The population has been thinning itself out ahead of the actual end, with people choosing how to die rather than waiting for an external event. Bunker mentality takes over when vehicles or animals approach. Liam carries a shotgun and cartridges like a man who knows how to use then. Director Jimmy Fay isn’t afraid to include violent outbursts and flying objects which cause audiences members to curse as they break apart on the floor. But some of the quieter moments could have been given a similar brooding intensity. 

Healy and O’Kane’s great character acting fully grasps the futility of the moment and the powder keg of pressure that builds up. An early dance around the table soon feels out of place as the couple settle into a war of attrition and bitter barbs. The play’s at its best when the darkness threatens to step over the threshold and invade the house.

The ambition of the wider creative team is nearly fully realised. Subwoofer speakers hang overhead to bellow out deep frequencies and rumbles that will unnerve the audience. Chris Warner’s sound design has great localisation of effects and is a constant presence – though it requires the actors to be micced up to be heard. Sarah Jane Shiels’ lights play well with the video backdrop which extends across the full width and height of the stage, showing the branches of a tree swaying over the family home, and a final warm glow.

While the scale of Douglas O’Connell’s video design impresses, its integration with the narrative varies. Sharp-eyed audience members will spot the announcement of the US going dark appearing on screen before Edel receives the news by phone. But for most of the rest of the time, it’s providing colour and visually reflecting the instability of the power supply rather than adding to the plot.

The actual denouement of the play – the climax and resolution of the plot threads – felt emotionally light with the couple’s final moments surprisingly quiet after such a raucous buildup. Instead it was the set which delivered the theatrics, revealing yet more pleasing secrets and tricks in the final seconds.

For me, Morton’s script hesitates to find a way to be truly profound. It does successfully capture the worn-out tiredness of a couple whose personal energy banks have become as depleted as the reactor powering their home. Even if the end of the world wasn’t quite so nigh, their lights would be flickering and permanently darkening their relationship. The apocalypse might actually have saved them.

Denouement continues its run at the Lyric Theatre until Saturday 15 November. It’s a production with big ambitions and a feeling of Armageddon in sympathy with the multiple conflicts around the world in 2025. Denouement is part of Belfast International Arts Festival.

Photo credit: Ciaran Bagnall

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