A woman looks up at a destroyed Bucket Fountain sculpture150 years into the future Sarah and Dan­ny meet, fall in love, and get mar­ried in a Welling­ton dev­as­tat­ed by earth­quakes, cli­mate change, and the effects of a dis­tant nuclear explo­sion. Then their careers sep­a­rate them by dis­tance — Dan­ny in Welling­ton work­ing to save the Earth, Sarah on Mars work­ing to cre­ate a new world. They can meet in the Atom Room, a vir­tu­al real­i­ty space where they can talk, touch and love. Will it be enough for them?

There’s a short preshow VR expe­ri­ence from Poly­tron­ik Stu­dios which sets the scene for Welling­ton. The land is under­wa­ter and dif­fer­ent to what we know now. Peo­ple have to wear pro­tec­tive suits. (Keep an eye out for the fly­ing car.) When the open­ing video sequence rolls in the the­atre we are already primed for the idea that every­thing has gone hor­ri­bly wrong. Out­side has (most­ly) become too dan­ger­ous for humans and in a sim­i­lar way we (most­ly) see Sarah (Har­ri­et Preb­ble) and Dan­ny (Tay­lor Hall) iso­lat­ed from oth­er peo­ple. Occa­sion­al­ly Sarah’s man­ag­er Mar­garet (Claire Wal­dron) swoops in, boss­es Sarah around then swoops out again. The con­cerns of the char­ac­ters are sim­i­lar to con­cerns now — gen­der roles, relat­ing to each oth­er via a dig­i­tal medi­um, work, the desire to be part of some­thing big­ger than your­self, fam­i­ly — with a small amount of tech­nob­a­b­ble to indi­cate it’s set in the future.

Direc­tor Lyn­dee-Jane Ruther­ford deploys the actors neat­ly through the snap­shots we get to see of their lives togeth­er. Preb­ble strikes just the right bal­ance between being in love and excit­ed about a rela­tion­ship as her poten­tial­ly species sav­ing work. She has won­der­ful moments where her face is par­tic­u­lar­ly ani­mat­ed and we can feel her character’s pas­sion. Hall starts sweet as a slight­ly bum­bling earth opti­mist which is expressed in his body lan­guage. This changes as the stakes change for his char­ac­ter. Wal­dron is mar­velous as a self-con­tained tyrant with voice and ges­tures rein­forc­ing her dis­tance from the oth­ers. A slight­ly breathy voice lat­er in the show reveals how affect­ed she is.

Set and cos­tume design­er Ian Har­man has tak­en inspi­ra­tion from a num­ber of fash­ion eras result­ing in a design that feels futur­is­tic yet famil­iar. Cos­tumes are light brown, sand coloured or cream which con­trast the vir­tu­al real­i­ty neon wire­frame style of the set. AV design­ers Ray­lene Beals and Johan­na Sanders (with videog­ra­phy by Ben­ny Jen­nings and Adam Browne) pro­vide visu­al aug­men­ta­tion. The light­ing design by Jen­nifer Lal works sym­pa­thet­i­cal­ly with the pro­jec­tions result­ing in a space that is always visu­al­ly inter­est­ing. Orig­i­nal music by Ruth Carr, Paul Dodge and Ryan Beehre pro­vides a sound­track that is ethe­re­al and affect­ing. I love the design and how it’s used.

I real­ly enjoyed this show* and I hope you go and enjoy it too.

 

* One thing miss­ing from this play for me is the lack of Māori. Come on! Jan­go Fett is a space Māori and there will be Māori in Welling­ton in 150 years!