Jermyn Street’s basement theatre provides the perfect space for Simon Stephens’ postapocalyptic play about two men hiding in a bunker after an unnamed global catastrophe. Several of Beckett’s plays have been performed on this stage in recent years and these characters are distinctly Beckettian. Ashton (Ross Gaynor) and Reece (Ian Toner) may be the last men on Earth; they spend their time rehearsing the same stories, sometimes singing and, ultimately, waiting. But for what?
The difference between Beckett’s men and Stephens’ is the emphasis of hope over despair, although the two converge at times. Ashton and Reece play memory games, it seems, enacting scenes from their former lives. These are filled with optimism and promise: a declaration of love, a moment between father and son, the announcement of a pregnancy. One man is a porter, the other a professor. In ordinary life, they might have little in common but here they become receptacles for each other’s most precious memories.
