Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Ed Macarthur, Tom Black, Nina Shenkman, Charlotte Merriam.

Civilisation is dead, it has been washed away in a huge flood and humanity is on the verge of extinction; it is not all bad though, there are still four human beings left alive in a pedalo, four human beings from very different social backgrounds, four separate personalities and outlooks. Let’s face it the future, unless they can come to some sort of compromise as they float on the high seas, unless they can agree on the prospect of their lives, then humanity is as washed up as seaweed on an icy shoreline.

Dugout Theatre’s Swansong is a play that actually asks the questions of what if, although they probably aren’t the same ones as you would find in Water World or in any climate change deniers’ reasoning. What if the people you are stuck with truly are the worst people you could imagine, what would you miss most aside from people, would it be humane just to chuck everybody else of the pedalo and let humanity finally come to its own crashing inevitable end?  Would it be the thought that it had all gone, it had all passed away, all the diseases, all the misery, all the poverty, all the political death, all chance of war; perhaps that might actually be a good thing after all.

The Pleasance Above stage reflected the loneliness that would be felt as you were trapped on the ocean’s deep and forbidding surface but it also held the thought of enduring the impossible, of finding a certain space of spirituality in the confines. As the play progressed, the realisation of how certain religious practices can start up flows over you, the texts written down are only pure at the point of writing, it is up to each person how they allow that text to devour or inspire them on.

The four actors, Ed Macarthur, Tom Black, Nina Shenkman and Charlotte Merriam played with the idea of spirituality well and the offering of a type of baptism in the blood of a captured and eaten swan was doled out across the room captured the prospect of rebirth and renewal with positive ceremony.

A great cast, a tremendous idea and the desire for change, Swansong is not an eventuality for the Human Race but if it is to pass then let it be in the form of these four actors who at least offer a comedy hope.

Ian D. Hall