How To Be a Person When the World Is Ending
Four Gen Z housemates (Miela Anich, Henry Kelly, Myfanwy Hocking and Sebastian Li) stare at their phones, play Dungeons and Dragons, bicker, and watch TV. They’re just hanging out till the Apocalypse happens - any time now. An alienated married couple (Meg Dunn and Sebastian Li) talk past each other. Pierrot the clown (Lachie Gough) keeps coming to work and trying but realises he’s just not very talented or funny.
A woman (Myfanwy Hocking) in a two-piece swimming costume sits on a beach in golden sunshine, waves plashing nearby. But she just can’t seem to be in the moment; she tries to read, she checks her phone, but is soon so… nothing that she tries instead some masochistic public masturbation…
The married couple decide they probably don’t love each other anymore… but neither one moves. Another couple (Henry Kelly and Myfanwy Hocking) try to make a porno but just can’t seem to agree on positions or what’s sexy…
On the surface, How To Be a Person When the World is Ending looks like a sketch comedy show. But unlike most sketch comedy shows, this one is held together by a strong thematic thread, a view of the world in its current state as experienced by these Gen Z characters.
The characters - or types - recur, but there is no narrative thread per se. The ensemble cast, all very fine, exhibit a precise awareness as to just what sort of play this is - and what they show us is disturbing. No one adds ‘psychology’. No one tries to be liked. No one elicits sympathy.
Usually, ‘thematically linked’ is the poor writer’s excuse for a run of random scenes meaning weak plot and poor storytelling. In How To Be a Person the scenes are not at all random. They have been written by cast member Myfanwy Hocking with a clear point of view and a biting intelligence, and then directed by cast member Meg Dunn with a keen sense of non-naturalistic comedy and a consistency of style.
Their characters have been told (repeatedly) that the world is about to end. OMG. So, what resources do they have in the face of this catastrophe? What can they do about it? The blurb for the show quotes some dialogue from one of the housemates (which also gives an example of the very smart writing).
“I was expecting a knock. I was expecting a crash. I was expecting a fucking bang. I was expecting the walls to shatter and the ground to open to molten magma and my house to float down the street. I was expecting it to boil then freeze then boil again but as far as I’ve seen, the end of the world is watching shit TV with you fucks.”
This is the comedy of defeat, of resignation, of ennui, of disappointment at the fact that, if we’re all gonna die, is it going to be this… boring? Available diversions are empty, trivial, evasive, acrimonious, and meaningless. Art? No - see Pierrot above. Relationships? What’s the point? Sex? We tried that.
D H Lawrence said, ‘Satire, yes - but in the name of what?’ The ‘what’ here is a salutary slap in the face, a kick in the bum for the defeated who don’t want to die but are having trouble finding a reason to live. One reviewer commented that How To Be a Person is what would happen in a collaboration between Caryl Churchill and Bo Burnham. That’s accurate as far as it goes, but the spirit of Beckett (minus any sense of resilience) is not far away.
The excellent cast and the intelligence of the writing and playing are unmistakable, but on the way home, The Companion and I agreed that How To Be a Person is certainly a real achievement in a very difficult form, but just might be one of the bleakest and most depressing shows we’ve seen in a long time. You may need to brace yourself for this show’s corrosive, and all too accurate humour.
Michael Brindley
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