Image provided by the company
Presented by Four Leaf Theatre
The show describes itself as being “millions of years in the future,” though nothing in The End of Everything conveys a sense of that. Humanity’s dubious longevity aside, this plays more like a quirky encounter in a messy apartment than a space station. The set has a certain crafty charm, though, with narrow uprights featuring cute little panels of lights, dials and knobs. The crude sharpie labelling really sells that DIY Fringe aesthetic.
Dee (Natalie Skov) goes through her routine of jumping jacks, custodial duty check-lists and giving her little plant a spritz. Her life is suddenly thrown into disarray by the arrival of another travelling human—Mae (Samantha Dodds). Her look and demeanour doesn’t really sell space traveller; seems as if she’s just had brunch.
The end of the universe is nigh and this story posits the Big Rip model of cosmic collapse. Their talk of people and things just kind of popping out of existence at random is a real stretch of the theoretical physics. In all fairness, I know they’re not going for hard-core science-fiction here—that Skov’s script brings these two ladies together to set-up a friendship and meander through some existential themes; execution is important, however, and this just doesn’t convey a believable world.
They swap sad backstories and have a mini-conflict that resolves easily. It’s wrestling with the very real sense of doom that pervades our collective psyche, but it’s too vague and twee to be properly resonant, even in this generically poetic mode.
Their dynamic overall is endearing, if affected. It’s very short, though, and flies by with a pleasant, cheerful tone.