Heads Up, theatre review: A bleak and brilliant solo show

For the duration of this bleak and brilliant solo show Kieran Hurley sits behind a desk in a dark suit, like a newsreader or perhaps an interviewer or doctor, though he’s shoeless like a holy man.

Staring at the audience, he reveals the neuroses of four characters, each of whom is glued to a screen. With the end of the world apparently near, they could do with raising their eyes to behold what one of them calls the ‘extended state of emergency’ — and so, he implies, could we.

Mercy is a futures trader, alert to disturbing fluctuations in the markets. Ash is a 12-year-old gamer who learns that her ex has circulated a compromising photo of her among her schoolmates. Leon is a drug-addled star currently obsessed with saving the dwindling bee population. Abdullah’s stuck working grim shifts in a cafe, bombarded with drivel about the need to keep calm and carry on.

Each story is imagined in the second person, and the repetition of ‘You’ emphasises the characters’ distracted, fretful isolation. The writing reverberates with the influence of other theatre-makers — and fleetingly acknowledges its relationship to recent monologues by Chris Goode and Christopher Brett Bailey.

But it has its own compelling poetry. Using nothing more fancy than two little keyboards to cue the nagging beats that underscore his words, Hurley infuses this hour-long piece with pain, prophetic intensity and a brooding soulfulness.

Until April 1, Battersea Arts Centre; bac.org.uk