Hive
With growing impatience two people wait for a future which has yet to arrive, one which is promised to be better than the past but which will likely disappoint; work on the new waterfront complex halted while Ria conducts an assessment of an infestation which has been found within the structure, even when it is completed it will not be somewhere she or her child Salve could ever hope to live.
Instead, their lot is what Salve calls “the rat coffin,” but will the new skyscraper really be significantly different, prone to flooding and casting a long shadow across houses and parks; “is it a beach if it’s sand next to raw sewage, or just upmarket kitty litter?” The question may be moot, as the strange infestation may not only be unidentified but actually unknown, a new species created from adaptations to a rapidly changing environment.
Directed by Susie MacDonald, Hive is a two-hander of minimal set and staging, the excellent Elin Doyle and Emily Millwood caught in a black-draped box basement with only an aluminium stepladder with a naked incandescent bulb atop to represent their claustrophobic existence, but lighting designer Will Hayman has created unexpected luminous delights which expand their enclosed world and shift the moods.
The limited space meaning dynamic action is similarly limited, Hive instead is built around the ideas, beginning with astute observations of the awkwardness of interactions with strangers and how easy it is to make them uncomfortable by saying the unexpected, but despite the encroaching despondency driven by pollution and poverty the tone is light.
Ariella Como Stoian’s script finding comfort in memories of better times, Hive makes the best of what it has in the same way Ria is accustomed to, something Salve has yet to learn how to do, though ten minutes shaved off the hour running time would bring a stronger focus, the production currently akin to the partially constructed building where the potential is apparent but not yet fully realised.
Hive runs at Assembly Roxy until Sunday 15th August
