Expiration Date @ Merchant's Hall

Review by Antony Sammeroff | 22 Aug 2013

A hundred years in the future, your personality can be saved onto a computer when you reach your expiration date at the ripe old age of one hundred and fifty. By this time you will probably already have had your retinas replaced, not to mention your liver if you happen to be a drinker. If your child happened to have died in an accident as young as 18 years old (perhaps the equivalent of only 9 in this day and age) you may have them replaced by a cyborg. If you get agitated you can always take your pill to calm down, and speaking of pills, you’ll never have to bake a cake again. You just pop a pill into a replicator and hey presto! Chocolate or Meringue?

This is the setting that Mildred, our protagonist, laments. On her expiration date, as her husband eagerly awaits her joining him in virtual reality, she longs to escape to heaven through the backdoor of suicide. The show boasts an original soundtrack, and an interesting use of technology, where the deceased appear to us on monitor screen as they voice act in front of cameras from the room next door. Sadly, at times the acting is rather laboured, the piece longs for a more down-to-earth, and natural touch so that we can believably step right into their world and inhabit it.

Many contemporary political concerns, such as over society's descent towards a surveillance state (“When I was born the government didn’t know everything about everyone,”) and a pill for every ill (“you’re agitated, it’s time to take your medication,”) are mirrored in the script, but the conveyor belt of anti-technological dystopian clichés also does not help build the case for this enthusiastic troupe: “You don’t know what real beauty is,” “A bridge is a man-made atrocity,” “Nature shouldn’t be replicated in a laboratory,” “A cake should be made by hand.” When Mildred expires, the play leaves room for more anacrusis and character interest than the phrase, “How can I go on without her?” which is sadly not pursued. However, as an extrapolation of contemporary concerns into a possible future, Expiration Date is not a play without merits.

Run ended http://www.abouttheartists.com/production_companies/5921-picaresque-players-theatre-company