On the Beach

ON THE BEACH caused PETE’S EYEBROWS to form a HIGH ARCH

The Dramatic Premise

There’s been a “Short War” in the Northern Hemisphere. The war was short because it involved a nuclear strike and nuclear retaliation and multiple countries. It’s a nuclear holocaust with, it seems, no survivors.

Photo Credit – Daniel Boud / STC

Australia, and the Southern Hemisphere, is unaffected. At least for now. But a cloud of radiation is drifting south. Will the “equatorial winds” prevent its inexorable movement south? Or is all life in all parts doomed?

A small community in Melbourne go on with their lives. What else can they do? There’s love, there’s pining for new love and there’s new life.

How long will it last? And does a distant message, seemingly from North America, represent hope or the extinction of hope?

Photo Credit – Daniel Boud / STC

The Moment

Peter volunteers to don a hazmat suit and venture from the safety of a US navy submarine to go ashore and investigate the Morse Code messages received in far away Australia.

Is it really a lone human trying to contact the outside world? Do they hold the secret to surviving nuclear fallout.

Photo Credit – Daniel Boud / STC

Peter makes his way through the debris and the smoke and the desolation – past the deceased body of the rescuer who ventured out before him – until he finds the source of the messages.

He is devastated by what he finds.

But then he sees a vision of his newborn daughter as a teenager and of the life they might have had, replete with the normal trivialities which, when lined up end to end, render life meaningful.

Meanwhile, I sat in row F and wept.

For more information regarding On The Beach:

On the Beach – Sydney Theatre Company

(Originally posted on 21 August 2023.)