Fringe theatre – taking you straight into the heart of the action.

In this case, I felt truly immersed as an audience member as I joined four characters with hours to go before the world ended, as they hung out in an underground car park, in the railway arches.

The great theatre space that is 53Two if not exact, is certainly adjacent to this setting (its previous iteration pretty much a carbon copy), and there’s nothing like listening to the banging, crashing, low rumbling of a world on fire ,as you sit in a dark enclosed space to get the old blood pressure reading up.

The sky’s on fire and everything’s falling apart.
Out of options, inseparable trio Ash, Oliver, and Kieron have retreated to their old childhood hangout to figure out what the plan is – or whether there’s even one at all.
That’s until Phoebe turns up. Wanting to talk. Wanting connection. Wanting forgiveness.
As the hours tick down, old grudges are unearthed and tempers flare as the group struggle to come to terms with the decade-long fallout of an event that drove them apart. If all you had was one night, do you think you could make things right again?

In this same space, writer Stephen Leach brought us the brilliant Can’t Wait to Leave back in 2024 and so I was thrilled when the stars aligned to bring us all back together this week, in the shape of new play One Breath before the End.

Directed by Mimi Collins, it tackles that old, deeply depressing question, how would you spend your final hours if the world was ending?

Who would you spend it with?

What would you eat (that’s more one of my own favourite considerations – see condemned man/woman/person’s last meal (I think I still stand firm on macaroni cheese)?

What wrongs would you make right (I think with this one, I’d lean heavily into Father Ted’s speech at the Gold Cleric Awards where I’d categorise and list everyone else who’d wronged me because unlike the Murphy’s, I am in fact bitter.)

In this case, we have childhood friends, twins, Oliver (Lewis Noble) and Kieron (James Chetwood), and Ash (Joshua Sinclair-Evan), now all in their mid-twenties, returning to their teen hangout, their haven, their port in a literal storm, as they count down the hours to an unexplained (well, unexplained to us, although such is the world that we do have a whole depressing menu of potential and likely explanations) apocalyptic end.

I have to say, they came across amazingly chipper in what was undisputedly (well it was disputed somewhat optimistically at times by one, given the increasingly sounds of explosions that occasionally cut through the dialogue) their final hours.

Until they weren’t.

And this was heralded by a frantic knocking in some ways more terrifying than the doom-laden rumbling and crashing heard above. A common and effective trope in the realm of the apocalyptic narrative is the almost equally scary threat of the unwlecome stranger infiltrating your (short-lived) haven, as you await your fate. However, in this case, the visitor was all too known to them and, for the most part, did nothing to address the unwelcome aspect of the encounter.

And as Phoebe (Olivia le May) reenters their lives, the regret and recriminations begin.

Having served nine years for a drink-driving incident that killed Ash’s girlfriend and injured Kieron, Phoebe is here to revisit the past, just as their collective futures are about to be taken away.

The dialogue flows easily between the characters, sharp, funny, infuriating, misguided, naive, sometimes harsh. There’s a phenomenon that certainly hasn’t left me unscathed whereby when you return to a place or people from your past, you find yourself seamlessly melding back into a state of your younger self (cue me morphing into my forever-on-the-edge sarcastic, moody, whiny 13 year old self, from the moment I cross the threshold of my childhood home).

And so whilst there is a sense of watching the now twenty-something group of adults spar and joust as teens at times, with circumstances dictating that they pick up where they once left off, there a frequent dark reminders of what led them to part in the first place.

I personally gain comfort in the uncomfortable in my consumption of art (yes, check.me.out). Put me in a dark, claustrophobic bricked theatre space with armageddon-like sound effects and once childhood friends tearing each other apart over the death of another, and I’m essentially in my happy place. Shock me with an unexpected acceleration of the narrative as I fear I’m about to witness an execution, and I’m thrilled and also curious to understand what it is about the back story of the incident and characters would take us to this point.

The end of the world, a collective staring of death in the face and the enormity of the realisation that you’re on the precipice of a soon to be erased existence as you and everyone else has ever known it, has got to be a bit of a mind-blower. And it is at these points when it all gets a ‘bit much’, even morbid mcmorbidface over here is relieved by our optimistic Kieron who interjects somewhat hopeful philosophy into proceedings in that what the Roman Empire saw as the end of the world didn’t come to pass and so history will continue to repeat.

I tell you, in 65 minutes, this play and its players will entertain in the moment, and provide a party favour on the way out,of philosophical questioning and frenzied ‘what ifs’ as you head home on the old Bee Network (or tube, for those on its next stop).

I look forward to the next one Stephen Leach.

You can catch One Breath before the End on its final stop on the tour in London at The Glitch, 27 – 29 May. Read more about 1912 Productions at 1912 Productions Official: Instagram, X | Linktree

For more details of upcoming productions at the fabulous 53Two, visit Theatre and Arts Charity | 53two | Manchester