Olga and Dino are leaving their lives behind. That much is clear right at the very start of the play, and we then spend the rest of the show finding out how they got to that point. Olga has done everything right: she has a steady relationship, twenty-five friends, a house and a job. Dino is a loner musician who plans her disappearance for weeks. They meet on a bus just as they each leave their familiar surroundings for the sake of a new, unknown life.
Anne Gehring plays Olga and Vera Ketelaars plays Dino, but the two actresses also narrate the story out of character and play supporting characters. Both performances are impressive in their physicality and use of the available space. On a simple stage furnished only with two wooden crates, and providing their own sound effects, Gehring and Ketelaars conjure up various scenes from the two women’s lives.
What starts out as fascinating storytelling soon becomes a bewildering journey with the actresses shouting a lot for very little reason. There are also stretches of time where nothing much happens, and strange movement sequences that don’t really fit. It is a challenge for the audience to fit these puzzle pieces together, and an uneasy feeling pervades that there is not a whole picture to be built.
Although we find out their reasons for leaving, we never find out what alternatives they believe exist, or indeed whether they find anything different. It is also difficult to celebrate their freedom with them when you know they have devastated the people they are leaving behind.
There are no surprises in this play, except if you count the screaming. It is only a fraction of a story, a story told in the first minute and then retold over the course of a further 59 minutes. While there is no doubt that the ladies on stage have plenty of talent, Bye Bye World is a bizarre non-event, little more than the start of a potentially interesting story.
