“APOCALYPSE, THEN” REVIEW – THE IRISH TIMES

by Mary Leland

TWO men, one in a box, on in a bath, make up the cast for “Apocalypse, then” taking place at the Everyman Palace Studio.  Written by Ciaran Fitzpatrick and John McCarthy, this presents a world suddenly under water; wondering if the water might be that of the Atlantic or the Mediterranean, one of them is told that, no, it’s Mitchelstown. The by-pass.

Even the apocalypse has its local geography, and the play sets up these physical incongruities as a counterweight to the personal dissonance of the characters, one a cynic, the other ostensibly making the best of the situation – the situation being extinction.

The flotsam washing up against the unlikely vessels inspires thoughts of survival along with the realisation that life is a series of half-understood images.  Mildly funny, mildly original and with a few imaginative leaps into survival psychology, the play does no harm to the reputation of its writers, its cast Raymond Scannell and Paul Mulcahy or its director Sara Jane Power, except that it might have been sharper and shorter.

Had that been the case, it might have distracted the audience’s thoughts from the sirens and storms raging outside the studio space, which to be useful at all should be made soundproof, although the combined effects of torrential rain and rush-hour traffic provided a suitably cataclysmic atmosphere.