Upon entering the Pilch, I was met with an atmosphere of corporate poise. In the centre of the stage: a long table, with eight business people sat around it. As the play begins, they launch into a conversation about Cyclopes, Manticores, Gorgons and what not. Perhaps the real “antipodes” are the two different worlds that collide over the course of this play: the tall tales that the characters tell and their banal, corporate setting.
Annie Baker’s 2017 The Antipodes is a story about telling stories. Headed by the inscrutable Sandy (Cameron Maiklem), a company works together to “tell a really good story” for a never-revealed cause — though I suppose story-telling lies at the heart of many a career, from advertising to journalism. Sandy’s only brief: the tale must encapsulate the “monstrous”. Consequently, the stories that the company tell vary wildly, from the monsters of the Greek myths, to the more personal stories about their “first time”, to Sandy’s PA Sarah (Natasha Hermer) telling her own bizarre personal anecdote-turned-fairy tale about a wicked stepmother (and a cannibal).
Naturally, the force of a play like this derives from its most compelling story-tellers. Danny M2 (Wren Talbot-Ponsonby) was one of these. His stories are quite awkward, even anticlimactic – when asked about his biggest regret, for instance, he monologues about his fear of holding a chicken in his youth. But it is Talbot-Ponsonby’s delivery that truly shone; the audience’s laughter gave way to a concerned silence, as he breaks down and laments a somewhat universal anxiety that one’s story is not “good enough”. Danny’s breakdown is complemented by the ever-disaffected Sandy (Maiklem); throughout the play, his cold and weary demeanour embodies the cold business setting. A story that doesn’t sell is of no interest to a man like him. I wish we got to see more of Talbot-Ponsonby’s performance, but unfortunately Danny is shortly fired after his outburst, and we never see nor hear from him for the rest of the play.
Adam (Saana Pasha) was a similarly entertaining tale-teller. While Pasha’s character had a rather minimal role in the first half of the play, Adam truly came into his own towards the climax of the drama, when George Eustace’s Dave impatiently demands someone – anyone – to just tell a story. In response, Adam blurts out a chthonic myth of the creation of the world involving a thousand-headed giant and a “sacred proto cow” named Bessie that emerges from his arsehole. Walking on the table as she conjures the primal, monstrous scene, Pasha’s performance is as captivating as it is utterly hilarious. I could listen to her character tell that story for hours.
The first half of the play generally felt a little insipid; the naturalistic setting and acting made it all feel a bit too much like a real-life office. It was only really after the interval that it felt like the action (or perhaps in-action, since the characters never leave the boardroom) picked up a little. A storm leaves the employees shut in for the night – sans Sandy himself. As time passes, and the company grows more and more desperate, we are offered a glimpse into the truly “monstrous”. Brian (Hal Gavin) pulls up a whiteboard, and devises a ritual for the office to chant to summon a good story: “AWEE PUUTEM RAD TROTS”. In the following scene (as the rest of the company sleeps), Brian peels his shirt off, dons a lion head, draws out a little dagger and, I won’t spoil it, but let’s just say that things get weird.
It was scenes like this, as well as Adam/Pasha’s story, that appealed to me more than the more boring scenes of day-to-day office life. I do wish that the production leant a little more into this overtly weird and experimental direction from beginning to end. A play like this demands a constant striving towards weirdness – this production was at its most energetic when it fully embraced the strangeness of Baker’s play.
There was a technical difficulty in that crucial, final minute of the play, which led to a few of the actors breaking character, but I am confident that these small cracks will be smoothed over in the next coming days. Peccadillo’s take on The Antipodes is quite admirable, and I look forward to what director Kilian King has to offer in future.
[The Antipodes, a show by Peccadillo Productions, is running at the Michael Pilch Studio, 4th-7th June 2025]