Citizens, Glasgow
After his recent arrest, Dominique Strauss-Kahn was described as a man who had "a difficulty in controlling his impulses". Whatever the outcome of this particular court case, it is a story that gives Dennis Kelly's After the End an unsettling topicality.
The claustrophobic two-hander is about Louise, a popular young office worker, who wakes to find herself in an underground nuclear fallout shelter. Mark, a colleague from the reprographic department, explains he has rescued her from the carnage created by a suitcase bomb. Luckily, he never got rid of the old shelter in his garden. Luckily, he kept it stocked with food.
It could be an episode of The Survivors were it not for Mark using the situation to exert his control. Free of the social pecking order that defined him as the workplace misfit and her as the alpha female, he tries to strong-arm Louise into showing him respect. Throw in his sexual urges, and we are in the dark territory of John Fowles's The Collector. Kelly seems to suggest that, given a bit of power, a man will cut out the complexity of a two-way relationship and assert his own desires.
In Amanda Gaughan's gripping production, Nicola Daley charts an alarming path from queen bee to neurotic victim. Underplaying the geeky aspect of Mark's character, Jonathan Dunn is all the more frightening for seeming ordinary. Together, they expose uncomfortable tensions in a battle of the sexes that has not yet ended.