Theatre review: The Antipodes

In what is becoming a regular occurrence Annie Baker's latest play gets its UK premiere in the Dorfman, where for The Antipodes her particular brand of hyperrealism tips that little bit further into surrealism. Baker herself co-directs with designer Chloe Lamford, whose deep thrust stage is a luxurious but personality-free conference room in which the characters will spend weeks or maybe months of their lives around the table - there's enough Perrier stacked up against the wall to get them though a siege. There is a real-life situation the scene evokes: The writers' room of an American TV show where stories are pitched and constructed. But exactly what kind of story Sandy (Conleth Hill) has gathered a team - some of whom have worked with him before, some of whom are new - to tell remains vague.

One thing that's clear is that telling the story is of utmost importance; at least Sandy and his unseen superiors seem to think so, and while the writers in the room seem to love their work there's also a terror that it - and their right to tell stories - could be taken from them if they don't get it right.

The only thing we know from the start is that the story has to be about monsters, but that soon starts to seem like a red herring, and presuming to be able to pin down what The Antipodes is about seems just as likely to be fraught with wrong turns. There certainly do seem to be some concrete, real-world concerns in the fact that Sinéad Matthews' Eleanor and Fisayo Akinade's Adam are the only woman and person of colour among the storytellers, and Eleanor is convinced they're such token presences that Sandy's assistant Brian (Bill Milner) doesn't bother making notes when they contribute. In a story about stories there's also philosophical concerns that you can easily imagine bothering a playwright with writer's block - like whether all the stories have been told and it's all over now.

Arthur Darvill's louchely arrogant but insecure Dave had a traumatic childhood, but he thinks the story it told is what defined who he became. Danny M2's (Stuart McQuarrie) stories are so banal as to be hilarious, but they're obviously the wrong kind as far as Sandy's concerned; after he questions whether the very act of telling a true story renders it false, he's taken out for a private meeting and never seen again. Like Eleanor's view of how time works, the play's treatment of what stories are spirals out into metaphysical levels that mirror back earlier moments. So the body horror of Danny M1's (Matt Bardock) story of a grotesque STD is a precursor to the life born out of gods' bodies in the creation myth Adam eventually builds, and finds an even more literal outlet when Brian invokes the supernatural and abruptly becomes ill (in a grisly but impressive bit of stage magic that's probably easier to see from the cheap seats than the stalls.)

Of all the questions The Antipodes throws up, the one I ended up wondering most was what they were really doing there: Were they writing a creation myth, or were they writing creation itself? Mentions of the outside world regularly encroach on the storytellers' work and Sandy often talks about how in dark times stories are more important than ever. But the system the storytellers operate in seems to be crumbling as well - Josh (Hadley Fraser) is still waiting to get paid, while the always enthusiastically helpful secretary Sarah (Imogen Doel) seems like a Neutral Janet, not actively unhelpful but not actually being able to help much when it really matters.

Needless to say The Antipodes defies categorisation as much as it does pinning down to a single meaning. On the way out it was clear that to a lot of the audience this was infuriating. Personally I was entertained by the individual stories - Sarah's utterly matter-of-fact telling of a childhood that turns out to have been a literal fairytale is a highlight - and quite happy for Baker's play to fire off ideas in every direction. If you actually tried to put all the pieces together what you'd end up with would probably resemble the chimerae the storytellers were talking about, back when they thought this was a story about literal monsters.

The Antipodes by Annie Baker is booking until the 23rd of November at the National Theatre's Dorfman.

Running time: 2 hours 5 minutes straight through.

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan.