Waiting for my friend to come back with the car (parking in Erskineville requires a canteen and hiking boots) I watched the company of Upper Crass destroy their set. They manhandled the cardboard out onto the pavement and set to ripping it into recyclable chunks. While appreciating the irony that the show was about 2 men who might be torn to pieces by landmines and ignoring how much fun they were having, it made me quite contemplative. Their obviously hard work was being shredded, a really terrific set was being destroyed and some of the metaphysical aspects of their show were floating discernibly in my consciousness.

THIS MODERN COIL certainly takes delight in destruction. It’s about death: accidental; yearned for; actively sought. But there is lightness and lyricism in the creation. Physically about 2 solders failing to successfully negotiate a minefield, the production shifts into parallel universes to consider the big question. Is death a rubber band, an energy field, a transition, water? Or, like this production, a craftily developed experiential experiment.

The publicity blurb is says It draws from works like “Waiting For Godot”, “Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead”, “Hamlet”, “The Graduate”, as well as David Bohm’s “Unfolding Meaning”, the graphic novel series “Promethea” and “Sandman”, and the video game “Bioshock Infinite”.

Those elements resonate differently with different audience members I imagine. For me the enjoyment was in the wit and the characters and the seemingly infinite variety of endings possible each time there was an ending. It’s very funny in places and well interpreted by Atlas Adams as the disarmingly naïve optimist, Booker and Tom Green as the poet and thinker, Zachary.

The actors really have a great rapport from the first time we see them. We immediately understand that they have spent a long time together in war and peace. They have shortcuts to communication and silences are ever-present. As Booker, Adams has a ready smile and a childlike enthusiasm. His physical and emotional foil, Green‘s Zachary is stoic and long suffering. Both actors have good command of the physical aspects of the role and there is some very clever static physical comedy. The cat in the backpack reaction was a highlight for me. They bring voice work with variety and carry and have an excellent command of tempo, a skill honed by their improv work. Green will sometimes react to Adams’ perfectly placed gormless Booker statements with sharp reports or with exasperated silence.

Director James Hartley has guided his cast well through the minefield of inaction and quiet, what actors often call “death on stage, right?”. He has them hold quite a few times and whether the stillness is empty or replete, it has clearly conveyed meaning. Nor does he allow them to overplay the comedy. The wit is all character based and much of it is laugh out loud. But there is a beauty that he allows them to wander into as well. I do, though, have reservations about how he has blocked the work in this space. Thrust stages are notoriously difficult and require more than the usher suggesting you sit on the sides for the best view.

Hartley is also the writer of the piece and it is well plotted, not too obscure and has thematic balance. I would have to say that in its current form THIS MODERN COIL is slightly too long, too many beach bits at the end , but the snappy beginning and varied and thoughtful middle show what it can become.

This is probably why I was a bit sad to see Ara Steel’s set annihilated in that way. It was environmentally respectful, was cohesive, yet had variety of shape and detail. Plus it supported both place and theme. I loved the way the slyly constructed death’s head upstage slowly crept into consciousness. Maybe in a parallel universe it still looms over Booker and Zachary.

THIS MODERN COIL has completed its run at THE FRINGE 2016.

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