TWO MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT by Michael Ross Albert (Assembly Theatre in association with One Four One Collective and the Spadina Avenue Gang). Runs to April 24 at the Assembly Theatre (1479 Queen West). $22.23-$54.06, Tuesdays pwyc. theassemblytheatre.com. Rating: NNNN
We all need a good vacation right now. But what if that vacation turned out to be way more stressful than your ordinary life?
That’s what happens to Jack (Luis Fernandes) and Tracy (Cass Van Wyck), the frazzled couple at the centre of Two Minutes To Midnight, Michael Ross Albert’s clever new comedy at the Assembly Theatre.
Midway through the couple’s stay at an all-inclusive tropical resort, an alarm sounds and they each receive emergency messages on their phones that a nuclear missile is headed their way. The two were on different parts of the island, and by the time they find each other the shuttles to the airport have taken off and even the resort staff has fled.
Which leaves them stranded on the beach facing their imminent deaths – with no cell signal or electricity to find out what’s going on. Instead, they’re forced to examine their relationship. Jack is convinced things have been going well; he was even planning to propose that night. Tracy, it turns out, thinks otherwise. And as the clock ticks down to possible doomsday, they open up about their feelings, which they haven’t been able to do in the three years they’ve been together.
Albert, as he’s demonstrated in earlier plays like The Huns (which is getting a brief remount later this month before touring to the Brighton Fringe Festival) and Tough Jews, is expert at lively, funny dialogue and setting up situations quickly and dramatically. And he always knows how to raise the stakes in a scene – although the fact that Jack and Tracy have been left completely alone strains credulity here. (Wouldn’t some of the resort employees also live on the island?)
What he’s so good at doing in Two Minutes To Midnight is slowly stripping away at his characters’ defences. Jack has spent the past couple of years trying to become a social media influencer reviewing resorts; periodically we see him whip out his cellphone to record video updates. What we don’t immediately realize, however, is what Tracy thinks of his side-hustle. Gradually, as their conversations reveal things about their financial and housing situation, we see her long-standing grudges and fears emerge.
The two actors work well together. Initially, Jack’s nervous energy and over-the-top pronouncements seem excessive, especially in the tiny Assembly Theatre space, but he himself later admits he has this “up and down mania,” which Fernandes captures completely. When Jack records his “content” for his unseen viewers, the actor completely transforms into a slick, upbeat, quick-talking vlogger – the person Jack wants others to see and admire.
Van Wyck’s Tracy, meanwhile, after recovering from what seems like shock, emits a lower, steadier flame than her partner. And by the end you can see and understand her mixed, but very real, feelings for him. (On one level, the play is a shrewd look at the differences between our online selves and our private ones.)
Director Janelle Cooper’s production is dominated by set designer Pascal Labillois’s painted backdrop showing a calm ocean, and there are cute little touches, like having a sign to the theatre’s toilet labelled “baño”; audiences also have the opportunity to don a lei and buy drinks adorned with umbrellas before entering the theatre. Chin Palipane’s lighting mostly works, except in an awkward flashback scene in which Tracy recalls a memorable text exchange.
Like all theatres, the Assembly Theatre was closed during the pandemic and the planned January opening of this play had to be pushed forward – and then pushed forward again. It’s a minor miracle that this essential storefront space has survived at all. But it’s hard to imagine the independent theatre scene without it. Treat yourself and book a seat.
