Okay, so I will be the first person to admit that because this play is what I have to analyse for university, I went in expecting it to be absolutely awful. I was wrong, it was at times confusing, very confusing, but overall it was an enjoyable play. At first I found how ambiguous what had happened was quite enigmatic and enticing, however I like to know the ‘who,what, when, why?’s’ of a story, this is why there are only a couple of Stephen King books I enjoyed. From what I could gather, there was some kind of STD alien? An old woman that’s maybe a master alien and she’s taking them to her planet that is described as beautiful and idyllic, or perhaps she’s meant to be an angel taking them to Heaven? Two massively different theories, I know, but these were the only explanations I could personally come up with.
Like I said, I like to know what is happening in a play, and the constant referral of whatever it was as the ‘thing’ and ‘it’ did annoy me, but like I said I am one of those people who likes to know what the fuck is going on. I also found this play very much reminded me of the TV series ‘The Leftovers,’ which I refused to watch after two episodes as I knew straightaway I was never going to find out what happened to the people that were ‘raptured.’ I found every character hard to like in this play, excluding Derek, they all came over as very unlikeable and quite frankly rude most of the time.
The only other thing I would recommend for this play would be to make a chest burster scene with Lydia and ask Sigourney Weaver to dress up as Ripley and appear from within the caravan to save the day, but apart from that all the actors and actresses did a really good job of portraying their characters and Ben Musgrave wrote a very original well-thought-of play.
Random Musings of a New Londoner 