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Theater of the Apocalypse
In the Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot and HOTHOUSE put their characters in surreal settings as the world burns.
“We share them, always.” It’s not a cutesy ritual: Jen and her cohort read the labels as a way of figuring out what cities remain unsubsumed by the rapidly moving coastlines, and to keep an eye out for the names of loved ones they lost “when the corporation cut off access.” Without spoiling too much of HOTHOUSE ’s marvelous climax and denouement, I’ll simply say that O’Reilly uses minimal resources to choreograph a riveting shipwreck (with John Gunning’s lights doing great work), and in its wake, rather than bleak devastation, there is, fact, one of the most moving epilogues I’ve seen in quite some time. “There is no redemption in outgrowing the past…” says Mac, playing a character who may or may not be Robin from the cruise ship, and speaking to a young child, “no transcendence in ceasing to be defined by our pain… no triumph in being more than a wound because we always should have been more.” True or false or complicated, it’s still a gentle battle cry: To save ourselves, as individuals, as families, as co-inhabitants of this huge hot house, we have to stop seeking absolution in our own suffering.
Or read this on VULTURE