Ged Manns apocalyptic comedy has some nice ideas and a few smile-worthy gags, but the plot is obvious and its actualisation painful.
On earth, a scientist discovers while staring at a wrapper for his favourite chocolate bar, that everything on earth has a secret bar code and, by extension, a use by date. Flash back a few billion years and we are told the tale of one entrepreneurial son and his divine cronies. J.C. Construction won the contract to create planet earth, but with a team made of Jesus, Ghandi, the Buddha, Lucifer and the Grim Reaper, various ideological differences arise and damage control must be employed. A termination date is agreed upon and 2008 signals the end of the world as we know it.
Though the premise is quite interesting, Manns script rarely surpasses the predictable and, at an hour and a half, watching this play is a bit of a slog. Avoiding the clumsy scene changes, in which all characters traipse off and then back on the creaking stage, might have significantly shortened its run time, but there was also too much shouting throughout and Saul Murphys direction was seriously inadequate. The one redeeming feature was Clair Griffithss power-hungry Lucifer, mostly because her angry tirades made her look like she wanted to be on stage about as much as I wanted to be in the audience. Were the world really about to end, I would not recommend passing your last moments in this makeshift theatre.
