The end of the world is an alarmingly hot topic at the Edinburgh Fringe this year, with Summerhall playing host to two visions of doom: Ontroerend Goed’s gentle elegy ‘World Without Us’, and this rather more frenetic take from Kieran Hurley.
His last major Fringe solo show was ‘Beats’, a homage to the last days of rave culture which was delivered with eye-watering intensity, despite the fact Hurley performed the entire thing sat at a writing desk.
Clearly desks are now his ‘thing’, as he sits behind one for the duration of ‘Heads Up’, hitting a sampler to triggers bits Michael John McCarthy accompanying electronic score. From his perch he weaves a series of frenetic tales about a bunch of people ‘in a city like this one’, going about their chaotic lives until one day Armageddon barges in.
Perhaps the key thing about ‘Heads Up’ is that it’s not about the end of the world per se: it’s about a disordered, twitchy, decadent society that feels like it’s teetering on the brink of something or other awful happening – and then the something or other awful happens, though we never learn too much about it. Perhaps the burning skies described are war with Russia, perhaps they’re simply some sort of cosmic karma.
The end is first detected by Mercy, a black female stockmarket trader, who somehow discerns it in the patterns of the markets and goes half mad trying to warn people. Elsewhere there's Leon, a feckless rock star, blitzed off his mind of coke and determined to save the bees; Abdullah, a young man freaking out in a Pret-style sandwich shop; and Ash, a sensible teenage tomboy smarting after her ex boyfriend released a revealing picture of her to the internet. Each of them seems symptomatic of a peculiarly modern form of strain; each is at a breaking point made manifest by the burning skies.
Hurley is intensely charismatic, and it’s a full-pelt, magnetic performance, a conjuring a society under unendurable strain. Something just slightly held it back from hitting the heights of ‘Beats’ for me, though:the sum is impressive, but the four different stories feel individually a bit undernourished, with a sense that the play’s heart lies more with Mercy and Abdullah than the other two. It feels like it needs a bit more meat on its bones: I’d like to have seen this particular apocalypse dragged out a bit longer.