My boyfriend and I, we enter BATS Dome and REM’s ‘It’s the End of the World’ is playing. It’s just so topical what with coronavirus infecting the world, our anxieties, and conversations these days. Seated, we’re handed a piece of paper where we’re supposed to write what we would miss the most if the world were to end right now. Holding the hand of the man that I love, I want to write ‘Everything about the person next to me’, but that feels a little too vulnerable and sappy so I write ‘BEER’ instead. In my defence, he writes ‘Kranskys’ and I know that because he asks me how to write the plural of ‘Kransky’ – just add an ‘s’.

If you’re prone to believing the end of the world is indeed nigh, you don’t want to miss Alayne Dick’s absurdist poetry/comedy show that explores depression and modern fears about her, your, and my limited time left on Earth. Or maybe you do. It depends on how anxious you’re feeling about it all.  

From missing awkward introductions, comfort foods, and of course the people she loves, Dick takes us through an hour of fatalism, making us share her sentiment that yes, everything worth loving is absolutely, terrifyingly fragile. Helping her on this quest is her pal Black Hole, a super massive one, which you can interpret as her depression, or the impending end of everything, or both. And there are cupcakes.

This is interactive theatre again, and if you’ve read anything else I’ve written, you know I’m not a huge fan, but she’s so earnest and endearing that this time it works for me. That, and I’m sitting far enough away so I don’t have to engage. It’s deep and meaningful content, but there are lols that add some levity to the doom and gloom in the room. My partner isn’t loving it, I think because he errs on the more optimistic side of life. A fatalist at heart, this is my death year (don’t ask) and I’m loving this idea of thinking about what I’ll miss when I die because that’s on my mind a lot.

I love that Dick isn’t going to bother with small talk now that the world is ending. There’s no time for that BS, people! Shouldn’t we all be living like it’s our last year? Shouldn’t we put less time into cultivating our dying plants instead of our dying relationships? Maybe we could be more like octopuses with their three hearts, and all that heartbreak. Dick’s monologue helps put life into perspective: bring on the apocalypse and its wild priorities, bring on the heartbreak. 

There’s a good amount of humour to temper the melancholy. I’m feeling melancholy but she lifts me when she insists that we all take out our phones and text a lovely message to the person we have a crush on (oh but I’m busy taking notes!). Oliver sends his message to me, which sets my heart aflutter (or is this a heart attack?), reminding me that even if the world is ending, or there are times when things are so dark inside that it feels that way, at least I’m not alone in it.

Tears spring to my eyes when Dick explains she’s spent so much of her life recapping her life. This trying to fit everything in, this trying to be as productive as possible, what will it all mean in the end? Our obsessions with social media, pedometers and other things that serve to dull our lives, should all be sucked up into that Black Hole (not the one inside us, but the one actually out there in the universe, please). There are other flooring, heart-guts-eating moments where she implores the audience to shine flashlights if we wished we’d missed more projects, kissed more girls, drank more beer, and can I add, eaten one or two more Kranskys.

Sure, time is pulling us all towards our eventual death, and yes, some of us will die faster (or slower) than others, but what are we going to do about it, punks? We can let the vacuum of our sadness and anxiety destroy us (and those we love), or we can raise a glass and make a toast to the black holes that lurk inside us, who hurt us, who scare us, but who ultimately make us whole. I’ll drink to that, whether it’s the end of the world or not.

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