Diplomatic Immunities: The End
Conceived and directed by Darren O’Donnell
Buddies and Bad Times Theatre
Closing February 25th, 2007
By Miles Baker
Posted February 18th, 2007Diplomatic Immunities: The End is a play about people, starring strangers. At its most interesting, The End is like a house party where you get to meet ordinary, yet very interesting people. You’ll think some of them are full of crap, some will say some things you’ve never thought about or experienced — either way you’ve been engaged.
Describing The End is hard to do. While there are staged parts, a good portion of the show is non-fiction, as the actors talk about themselves, their fears, and their insights. There is also a great deal of video projection, including recordings of interviews from all over the western world. After an interview segment, the cast tells you about the person — where they are from, what they are afraid of, what religion they subscribe to, how they think the end of the world will happen, and what sound they would like to hear at the end of it (among other things). It’s neither theatre, nor performance art, nor video art, nor installation.
But classifying The End isn’t important or as interesting as the show itself.
Most of The End refuses to draw conclusions, but by the very end the overall message is that cooperation, not competition, is the true nature of life. The audience stands up and recites a pledge saying as much. Personally, I don’t agree with that idea. I think our nature is a healthy mix of cooperation and competition. But my reaction to this is equally important to what O’Donnell is trying to do. The End wants to get the audience thinking about other people and looking at new points of view; it seems intentional that the creators want some of the audience to disagree with them.
The biggest problem with the show is that there are times when The End doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. The ideas start big and complicated, but they have no place to go. While there is structure to the show, it isn’t a typical structure where the action and excitement build up to anything.
The show staggers during the audience interviews. At two different points, audience members are brought onto the stage and asked questions by the cast and audience. These are interesting and make each night a unique experience, but they also slow down the action. Essentially, you’re watching an unedited interview that goes on a little too long. That being said, both of the people brought up were interesting and did have something to contribute the themes of the show at large, but they were both tangents in a show that already had many tangents.
By far my favourite part of The End was the ending itself. There is a video projection of the cast interviewing an elementary school class about the end of the world. The kids are wise beyond their years and very cute. The cast asks them what song they would like to hear at the end of the world. One boy suggests “SexyBack” because he likes it. The class ends up selecting Queen’s “We are the Champions.” The final image is of one of the cast members (Ulysses Castellanos) silhouetted and singing the song while the children play dead behind him. The mix of play with incredible seriousness is what makes The End successful.