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RESONANCE FM
MORNING STAR
FRINGE REPORT
RESONANCE FM
Hazmat & Me, Blue Elephant Theatre
A very weird love story… a play about companionship. Very inventive… an animation brought to life… if you want to see something innovative, imaginative, interesting, colourful and bright, go and see Hazmat and Me
MORNING STAR
WHEN you enter the theatre, he's already on the stage, slowly and deliberately winding up the gramophone.
Low on food and drink, he ekes out an existence waiting for something, anything, to happen. He listens to old 78 records and contemplates suicide.
It's almost 10 minutes before he utters a word.
All understandable, as he is the last survivor after the end of the world.
However, there is another. Eight feet tall, dressed in a yellow radiation suit and lovingly called Hazmat, it lumbers onstage and briefly gives our survivor hope.
At first, it's a complex, psychological game as man and whatever is in the suit spar and circle each other to establish their positions in this post-apocalypse landscape.
Hazmat is initially friendly, almost jovial, taking pictures of them with a Polaroid camera. Then, he reveals that he has that scarcest of resources, food and drink, and the balance of power changes and the tone darkens.
The survivor effectively becomes a laboratory experiment for Hazmat. In return for food, he has to undergo various tests and humiliations and increasingly finds his behaviour manipulated and controlled by Hazmat.
In the end, they come to an uneasy resolution and realise that they probably need each other on equal terms, rather than as master and servant.
Matt Hill, playing the survivor, carries the bulk of the play on his shoulders, but Ed Birch in the radiation suit - effectively a mute role - deserves special credit as does Anton Maiof, who provides the atmospheric music.
The play raises many questions and my companion had lengthy discussions with friends about it over the following days, which must testify to its power as a piece of theatre.
FRINGE REPORT
Jenny Diggins
Hazmat & Me, Blue Elephant Theatre
The main character (Matt Hill) in Hazmat & Me is a scientist and lonely apocalypse-survivor. He drags himself through sham normality - holding a birthday party with nothing but a creaky gramophone for company. Although performed with great humour, it is a heartbreaking scene - made more so by his resigned air of tired routine.
He is surrounded by a fascinatingly intricate set. It's a collection of salvaged 1930’s bric-a-brac, patched ingeniously into a brave parody of home-comfort - complete with bicycle-powered reading lamp, and leaking foot-pump-driven stand pipe. It feels as if the scientist has spent years building this carefully-made shadow of happier days.
Just as he is ready give up on his defiance, things turn on their head with the arrival of Hazmat (Ed Birch) - a mysterious 8-foot, lemon-yellow radiation suit.
The silent boiler-suit and shrilly animated scientist run into frequent incidents of comedic miscommunication. But ultimately they are drawn together by their shared loneliness. It becomes a charmingly quirky (and heart-warming) platonic love story. Both actors are adept at balancing humour with pathos, and succeed in communicating a huge amount with a very minimalist script.
The unique atmosphere of the play is complimented by an other-worldly soundtrack - performed live by Anton Maiof - full of hissing static and echoing metallic noise.
