The Mumbai attacks made Theatre Absolute’s Zero’s dystopic vision of a world starkly divided by terror in the very near future seem even more eerily prescient. It is a great pity that the production’s successful national tour has just ended: now we need this sort of imaginative, fearless theatre if we are to avoid the fate the play predicts.
Zero is the story of one of hundreds of interrogation camps set up twenty years from now to extract information from detainees known only as ‘the others’. It is economics, we discover, rather than religion that has caused have-nots to attack Westerners on a large scale. In the world of Zero even rainwater is a commodity. Even fake rainwater.
The story’s broken time frame is seen through the memories of Alex, a reluctant soldier, brought in to interpret during brutal rounds of questioning. Alex, played with marvellous moral ambivalence by Stephen Hudson, forms unlikely relationships with a junior recruit (Daniel Hoffmann-Gill) and an inmate (Damian Lynch) as he begins to penetrate the camp’s darker secrets. Alex’s tragedy is that he is not a warrior poet or a lone voice of reason in a mad world$$s$$ he is just an ordinary, flawed man whose stand against the terrible things he witnesses could never hope to succeed.
Chris O’Connell’s excellent writing and strong performances from all five cast members ensure that the emotional intensity remains in place as the play’s scope ranges from torture to pathos over barely 90 minutes without interval.
Theatre Absolute’s muscular storytelling, inventive use of soundscapes, pools of light and a simple scaffold set lend Zero a fast, fierce urgency to match the importance of the subject matter. I hope it returns soon. The Cottesloe at the National would be an ideal venue.
Zero, Theatre Absolute, Warwick Arts Centre. Season Closed.
